The Nation Newspaper

Category: Femi Abbas

  • MUSWEN on the Move

    Have you not seen how Allah has presented the parable of good deed like that of a fruitful tree which roots are firmly planted in the belly of the earth while its foliages sprout gorgeously into the firmament of the sky, yielding (edible) fruits every season by Allah’s permission? Allah presents human beings with parables that they may be mindful”

                                                            Qur’an 14 verse 24.

     

    Preamble 

    In what is considered a logical move to solidify its strategy in upholding the unity of the Southwest Muslims, a powerful delegation of the Muslim Ummah of Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) paid a courtesy visit to Ado-Ekiti, the capital city of Ekiti State, last Sunday. The visit was for two main reasons: (1) to congratulate the new President-General of the League of Imams and Alfas of the Southwest, Edo and Delta, Alhaji Jamiu Bello Kewulere who is also the Chief Imam of Ado-Ekiti; (2) to reassure the Muslim Community of Ekiti as well as the League of Imams and Alfas that MUSWEN is as much in partnership with them as it is with other Muslim Communities and organisations in the region.

    The delegation was led by the President of MUSWEN, Chief Sakariyau Olayiwola Babalola, OON who is popularly known as Chief SOB Babalola. He became the President of MUSWEN early this year at the General Assembly meeting of MUSWEN. He is the third President of that umbrella body of the Southwest Muslim Ummah. He succeeded Justice Tijani Bolorinwa Babalakin, JSC (Rtd), CON, LLD  who also succeeded the late Prof Aliu Babatunde Fafunwa, NMO, CON, the pioneer President of MUSWEN.

    Ever since he assumed office as President, Chief S.O.B has been taking some revolutionary moves aimed at putting MUSWEN on a very sound footing and at improving the welfare of the Muslim masses in the region. One of his progressive moves was the trip to Ado-Ekiti last Sunday which further confirms that this President is really on course in his determination to move MUSWEN to a higher pedestal. That visit which will soon be followed by similar ones to other states reminds yours sincerely of an article published in this column about MUSWEN in 2009. It went thus:

     

    Dynamism and Evolution

    “Life is both dynamic and evolutionary. Its dynamism springs incontrovertibly from its evolution. Without evolution, there can be no experience for man. And, without dynamism, every progressive move capable of fetching more experience would have been in vain. To Islam, one of these two phenomena of life (dynamism and evolution) is a corollary of the other. Thus, the presence of evolution without that of dynamism is like the appearance of the sun without its rays.

     

    Darwin’s Theory of Evolution

    Contrary to the atheist theory of evolution propounded by a British naturalist, Charles Darwin, in his book entitled ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection’, published in 1859, Islam believes that evolution is rather a matter of reformation than transformation. Darwin had wanted the world to believe that all living organisms were from a single atom, which transformed from nature to nature and from shape to shape until all the living things we can see today came into existence.

    He also hinted that all those perceivable living things would not remain what they were and concluded that they would change from time to time assuming new natural postures entirely different from what they looked originally. By this queer theory, cockroaches were expected to transform into man at a stage and man into a cow or an elephant. Can you imagine that?

    Thank God, however, that the widely popularised but obviously illogical theory has now been consigned to the refuse bin where it naturally belongs. Falsehood is like a smoke oozing spirally and aggressively into the atmosphere. It may pollute the air for a while. It may colour the atmosphere momentarily. But it will finally and definitely vamoose into permanent oblivion. Allah had alluded to this in the Qur’an where He says: “truth has come and falsehood has vamoosed; surely, falsehood is meant to vamoose”. The Darwin theory of evolution is a typical example of such falsehood.

    Readers may be wondering how Darwin’s theory of evolution concerns MUSWEN. This will be explained shortly. In one of the write-ups published in this column in the past, I described Islam as “a mighty ocean flowing ceaselessly towards all directions and watering all plants into life through the deltas of adjoining rivers”.

     

    Reminiscence

    When that ocean flowed into Nigeria about 1,000 years ago, it only attracted a few men and women of divinely guided minds who were foresighted enough to embrace the new light of Islam coming to illuminate the dark continent of Africa. For several centuries thereafter, that light remained in the area now called Northern Nigeria. And when it eventually reached the Yorubaland (now Southwest Nigeria), in the 15th century, it hardly found any tributary with which to water the plants around. All the people who later embraced Islam and became Muslims practised it as individuals and not as organisations. They only came together as congregations in Mosques during observance of Salat.

    It was only in 1916 when Ahmadiyyah Muslim Jama’a came to Nigeria via Lagos that the idea of real Islamic organisations began to germinate. Hitherto, all Muslims in the north and in the south were just Muslims of the Sunni doctrine. Shi’ah, at that time, had not yet been known to this part of the world. The little differences that later arose among the Sunni Muslims emanated from the differences of opinions among the four renowned Sunni Imams (Malik, Shafi’i, Hambali and Hanafi) concerning the jurisprudential interpretation of Sunnah. And, with time, when Sufi doctrine began to spread, ignorance took the centre stage as the followers of Qadriyyah and those of Tijaniyyah began to engage in mutual confrontations with each claiming a non-existing superiority over the other.

     

    Nigeria’s First Muslim Organisation

    It may therefore, be said that the very first real Muslim organisation in Nigeria is Ahmadiyyah Muslim Jama’a, which was imported into the Southwest of Nigeria from England in 1916. Although that organisation later broke up into two main factions in Nigeria, it nevertheless opened door for many other Muslim organisations to spring up especially in Lagos.

    Some of such organisations include Jamaatu Islamiyyah, Anwarul Islam, Ansar-ud-Deen Society of Nigeria, Zumratul Islamiyyah, Nawair-ud-Deen Society of Nigeria, Muslim Association of Nigeria (MAN)  and a host of others, like the Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN), National Council of Muslim Youths Organisation (NACOMYO), Federation of Muslim Women Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN), The Criterion,  Nasrullah-li-Fatih (NASFAT), Fatiu Quareeb, The Muslim Congress (TMC) and the like, most of which sprang up later in Lagos.

    However, except for bodies like Lagos Muslim Council and the League of Imams and Alfas, none of the aforementioned organisations attempted to serve as an umbrella for the entire Muslim community in the region. Even the two that made attempt only succeeded in catering for certain sections of the Ummah. This is in contrast to what obtains in the north where Jamaatu Nasril Islam is the main umbrella body for all Muslim organisations in that region.

     

    NSCIA and JNI

    Considering the fact that Jamaatu Nasril Islam (JNI) serves the entire north the South West Muslim population which is less than 20 percent of the northern Muslim population, ought to have created a similar umbrella for the region’s Muslim community to serve as a strong compliment to that of the north.

    But, even after about 500 years of embracing Islam, the thought of having such a body did not materialise until August 2008 when MUSWEN came into existence. One can therefore see why the Muslims in this region were so disunited even before a common threat. But it is better to be late than never. At last, MUSWEN has come to stay and it is waxing stronger.

     

    Genesis of MUSWEN

    The idea of forming MUSWEN as the umbrella body for the Southwest Muslims started in March 2004 at the instance of ‘The Companion’, a Lagos based Organisation of Muslim business and professional youth elite. MUSWEN as umbrella body was inaugurated in Ibadan in August 2008 in the presence of virtually all the frontline Muslim Obas and Chieftains. His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto was the Special Guest of Honour on the occasion where all Muslim organisations in the Southwest were duly represented not as guests but as full members. Their presence indicated their commitments.

     

    MUSWEN’s Vision

    MUSWEN’s vision is of a united and effective voice for Muslims in the region under a strong, veritable and collective leadership. This had eluded the region for a very long time but the right time has come. The overall aim is to project the right image of Islam and raise the profile of the Muslims in this part of the country with a formidable unity. That aim also includes enabling them and their offspring to live fully worthy lives as staunch believers and practitioners of the faith while at the same time contributing their quota to the development of the country as respected citizens.

     

    Before Now

    As individuals and organisations, we had wandered aimlessly for centuries like unguarded flock. We had cried for a guiding umbrella body without getting one. We had identified disunity as the bane of our existence and yet we had failed to find a solution for it. But Allah has a time for everything just as He has a programme for every nation or community. Now is the time for solving the chronic problem confronting the Southwest Muslim. Now is the time to flock together in peace and harmony. Now is the time to fly where we had been crawling and fortunately, MUSWEN has a capable pilot in its President, Chief S.O. Babalola.

    Who can claim to be happy where virtually all the children of school age that are out of school happen to be Muslims? Who can feel satisfied with having fewer schools and fewer teachers than we need at all levels our educational system? Who can claim to be well pleased with a situation where the most skilled and most professionally qualified Muslims have crossed to the other side of the bridge due to lack of guidance? Who does not know that the enclave of penury in this part of the country is domiciled in the Muslim community? Should we continue to be complacent with this gloomy situation and indifferent to a positive change? To put correct perspective in place, only cooperation by all will be good for all.

     

    An Eye Sore

    If we look around us, we shall find that almost all the touts in our city and town motor garages claim to be Muslims. Overwhelming majority of ‘never do well’ artisans in our region claim to be Muslims. Most of the hooligans used by the politicians to kill or maim political opponents claim to be Muslims. There are no worthy private Muslim schools in which to enroll our children. No trusted Muslim hospitals are available for our masses. Few Muslim law chambers can compare with those for non-Muslims. Few Accounting firms owned by Muslims are of the highest standard. Even ordinary continuous education centres to coach our children for Secondary School Certificate or General Certificate of Education or Joint Admission and Matriculation exams are not available for Muslims. Why then, are we complaining of attempt in certain quarters to convert our children? Who does not know that anybody who pays the piper automatically has the authority to dictate the tune?

     

    Why MUSWEN?

    It is in order to end this gloomy situation and rekindle the glow of hope that MUSWEN emerged as a formidable platform for the Muslims of the Southwest to prove their mettle. But why is MUSWEN so named and why is it restricted to the Southwest of Nigeria?

    The history of Islam and the conditions of the Muslims in Southwest Nigeria are so unique that they require a special and appropriate attention. The presence of Islam among the Yoruba people who inhabit the area now called Southwest dates back to centuries before the advent of Christianity and the coming of the British colonialists in 1842. Islam had thus made a tremendous impact on the language and culture of the people. Being a religion of literacy and education, Islam brought these to the Yoruba and the rest of West African people for the first time.  At that time, Yoruba language was committed to writing in Arabic alphabets otherwise known as Ajami. Arabic, therefore, became the first language of literacy as well as the medium of formal communication and scholarly discourse among Yoruba Muslim scholars. But hasn’t that been reversed today?

     

    Concern

    It is rather a matter of concern and even an irony that the same Muslims are now far behind their Christian counterparts in education. How did this irony come about? How can it be reversed?

    What are the aims and objectives of MUSWEN? What is its structure? What programmes does it have for the Southwest Muslims? What is its position vis a vis the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs? These and many more questions about MUSWEN will be answered in this column in the near future In sha’a Llah.

  • Details of Hajj

    Details of Hajj

    Preamble

    This is the season of Hajj. It comes up in the month of Dhul Hijjah every year. Hajj means aspiration towards a higher pedestal in spirituality. It is, divinely, a pillar of Islam made obligatory by Allah for Muslims who can afford it once in a lifetime. Hajj is an ordained pilgrimage and not a mere tourism. Thus, the visa issued to Muslims who perform Hajj annually is that of pilgrimage and not of tourism. Whilst pilgrimage is a spiritual exercise, tourism is a pleasurable journey.

     

    Similitude of Hajj

    The similitude of Hajj in the life of a Muslim is like that of pregnancy in the womb of an expectant mother. The experience may vary from woman to woman as the foetus in the womb undergoes various stages before reaching the stage of delivery. By the time the child is finally delivered, the mother feels a relief of her life while the child assumes a tabula rasa (clean slate) that makes him absolutely innocent.

    Spiritually, a pilgrim is like a newly born baby if he strictly performs Hajj as prescribed by Allah. But if he returns into the world of vanity after Hajj, he automatically becomes like a person in snow-white attire who finds himself in a palm oil market. Unless he spiritually guides his loins, he may immediately become a tainted person both in body and in soul.

     

    Rigours of Hajj

    Muslim pilgrims who are going on Hajj must be prepared to go through series of rigour both spiritually and physically. The rigour of getting the money with which to perform Hajj; the rigour of getting the travelling documents including visa; the rigour of taking care of the home front before embarking on the Holy journey; the rigour of boarding the plane with a sense of high risk; the rigour of going through the security check at the embarkation point as well as the disembarkation point in Saudi Arabia;  the rigour of performing the Tawaf and Sa’y; the rigour of moving from Makkah to Mina on the 8th of Dhul-Hijjah, then to Arafah on the 9th of Dhul-Hijjah, and back to Mina via Muzdalifah on the 10th of Dhul-Hijjah; the rigour of locating the tents at Arafah; the rigour of throwing the pebbles at the Jamrat in Mina on the three or four days known as Ayamu-t-Tashrik; The rigour of performing Tawaful Ifadah at the Sanctuary in Makkah after the first day of throwing pebbles; the rigour of shaving the head (by men) and slaughtering the rams by all; the rigour of performing the farewell circumambulation otherwise known as Tawaful Wida‘i all in the midst of millions of people can be too much to forget so soon  after Hajj.

    Whoever is not bothered by the money spent on Hajj should at least be bothered by the various stages of the rigour involved including that of visiting Madinah. To lose all these to the forces of Satan after Hajj is like losing one’s travelling passport after obtaining visa. The prayer of every genuine pilgrim is to retain the validity of Hajj forever.

     

     Conditions for Hajj Performance

    Performance of pilgrimage must be based on genuine intention and high spiritual standard. An intending pilgrim must have attained puberty. He must have been an ardent practitioner of the first four pillars of Islam: (Salat, Zakah, and Sawm) all of which are fervently based on faith (Iman). Hajj without these pre-requisites is like a tree without roots.

    Money is a major pre-requisite for Hajj but it is not absolute.

    Hajj, the last pillar of Islam shows very vividly, the similitude of what mankind will experience on the Day of Judgment. Looking at the unique way in which pilgrims dress for Hajj and how they assemble at Arafat leaving their luggage behind in Makkah, one will realize how ephemeral this world is.

     

    Purpose of Hajj

    The various stages of preparation through which pilgrims pass before arriving at Arafat are symbolic of our peregrinations in life as human beings. Like the Day of Judgment, Arafat is the climax of Hajj performance. Anybody who misses Arafat misses Hajj. But Arafat is not by physical appearance alone. It takes a combination of factors to participate effectively in that great assembly which serves as the climax of Hajj.

    For Hajj to serve its spiritual purpose in the life of a pilgrim, certain steps must be taken before leaving home. They are as follows:

    • Fine-tuning the first four pillars of
      Islam very sincerely
    • Packaging the intention to perform Hajj
    • Ensuring the security of the way
    • Providing for the family and dependants
      at home
    • Paying all the outstanding debts
      including promises
    • Ascertaining the condition of health
    • Perfecting immigration procedures and
      undergoing all necessary medical
      services including inoculation
    • Assuming a mood of humility like that
      of a servant approaching his master.
    • Readiness to endure hardship and to
      tolerate fellow pilgrims’ attitudes.

    Admonishing Muslims on spiritual journey, including Hajj.

    Prophet Muhammad once said: “Actions shall be judged according to intentions. Whoever embarks on a spiritual journey for the sake of Allah will be adjudged on that basis. And whoever bases his/her intention for pilgrimage on marriage or material gains should not expect any reward beyond that for which the intention is based”. The steps to follow in the performance of Hajj are as follows:

     

    The Miqat

    Miqat is the specified place for the wearing of Ihram dress. There are five of such places in all. But the one earmarked for pilgrims from Nigeria cannot be reached by pilgrims travelling by air. It is over-flown while crossing the Red Sea. What most Nigerians do therefore is to wear their Ihram dress in Jeddah which has now been adjudged right through a Fatwah. Thus, Nigerian pilgrims can now wear their Ihram dress on arrival at the pilgrims’ airport in Jeddah.

     

    Tawaful Qudum

    Tawaf means circumambulation of the Ka’bah. The very first Tawaf to be performed by any pilgrim on entering Makkah is Tawaful Qudum. It is performed before a pilgrim settles down in any residence. Tawaful Qudum is an obligatory Sunnah from which only residents of Makkah among pilgrims are exempted.

     

    Residence in Makkah or Madinah

    Most Nigerian pilgrims often seek their accommodations in Makkah or Madinah close to the Haram. This is to enable them walk to and back from the Haram conveniently at the time of any Salat. To minimise pilgrims’ regular occurrence of missing their ways, they are provided with hand bands bearing the addresses of their residences. Pilgrims are therefore advised to wear such bands at all times to enable them show it to either the Hajj guides or policemen when the road is missed. It is also important for pilgrims to always be with their identity cards provided by Nigerian Pilgrims’ Commission or private agents. This is to enable them to be identified in case of sickness, accident or even death.

     

    Movement to Mina

    Pilgrims must be ready to undergo some rigour in the process of moving to Mina from Makkah. The rigour which normally affects all pilgrims is engendered by limited time available for millions of   pilgrims who must move to that spiritual camp before the sunset on the day preceding Arafah day.

     

    The Day of Arafah

    At the Plain of Arafat, pilgrims are advised to stay under their tents and concentrate on the spiritual activities that take them to the place.

    They must reach Arafat by mid day when Salatu-d-Dhuhr and ‘Asr should be observed combined. Anybody who is not at Arafat by mid day is considered not to have taken part in the assembly and therefore missed Hajj. Immediately after observing the combined Salatu-d-Dhuhr and ‘Asr the Imam who led the two Salat is expected to give a sermon. Listening to such sermon is as compulsory as giving it.

    The great assembly of Arafat terminates shortly before sunset (Magrib) and the pilgrims return to Mina via Muzdalifah.

     

    Muzdalifah

    At Muzdalifah, pilgrims are expected to halt their journey to observe Magrib and ‘Ishai combined. They are also expected to pass the night there and observe the Salat-s-Subh of the following day before proceeding to Mina. Muzdalifah is adjacent to Mina and is therefore a walking distance.

     

    Jamrat

    Stoning of the devils (Rajmu Jamrat) begins a day after Arafat and continues for the next three or four days that the pilgrims are supposed to spend at Mina. This exercise is obligatory and without it Hajj is incomplete. There three points at which stones are to be thrown. Seven pebbles are to be thrown at each point on every one of the three or four days to be spent in Mina.

    While going for the pebble-throwing exercise, pilgrims are advised to take their pebbles along with them. Except for the first day when seven pebbles are supposed to be thrown at only one spot, pilgrims are required to throw twenty one pebbles each day in the three spots provided while they remain in Mina.

    Picking such pebbles at the point of throwing them is forbidden. All pebbles must have been picked before leaving the tent for the ‘Jamrat’ or on the way.

     

    Majzarah (Abattoir)

    Slaughtering of all sacrificial animals is done at the abattoir in Mina. Pilgrims do not need to bother themselves by going to the abattoir for the purpose of carrying out this compulsory obligation. They can simply buy the guaranteed ticket sold by designated Saudi agents. The ticket is the evidence that one has performed that duty. The slaughtering is done on behalves of the pilgrims by some authorised artisans who are paid by the Saudi Hajj authorities from the money paid for those animals. The animals to be slaughtered at Jamrat range from rams to camels. A pilgrim should slaughter one ram or more while seven pilgrims may combine to slaughter one camel or five of them may jointly slaughter on cow.

     

    Tawaful Ifadah

    For pilgrims who can afford to go to Makkah after throwing the first seven pebbles, it is good to perform Tawaf-ul-Ifadah. For those who cannot, the exercise can be deferred till the end of Tashrik.

    Pilgrims who have performed Tawaf-ul-Ifadah are free to shave their heads and change from their Ihram dress into civil or traditional dresses.

    The only reason for any pilgrim to go to Makkah from Mina during the camping period is to perform Tawaf-ul-Ifadah. No pilgrim should break camping rule by going to Makkah without performing Tawaf-ul- Ifadah. And after performing Tawaful Ifadah, no pilgrim should remain in Makkah or elsewhere without returning to Mina before sunset.

    With the completion of the camping days in Mina and the arrival of all the pilgrims in Makkah, Hajj has been completed except for Tawaf Wida‘i  otherwise called farewell Tawaf. That Tawaf is compulsory.

    It is then left for pilgrims to decide whether or not to go to Madinah. Going to Madinah is not compulsory. It can neither validate nor invalidate Hajj. But it will be spiritually odd for any pilgrim to choose not to visit the Prophet’s Mosque.

     

    Conclusion

    Throughout the Hajj exercise, what should be uppermost in the mind of a pilgrim is the spiritual benefit.

    Hajj is made compulsory only once in a life’s time for those who have the wherewithal to undergo it and can satisfy the conditions attached to its performance.

    On arriving home finally, pilgrims are not expected to start organising parties in celebration of a successful Hajj performance as ignorantly done by some Nigerians. Maintaining Hajj is a necessity for those who know the value of doing that. Whoever is privileged to perform Hajj once should forever be grateful to Allah as no one is sure of getting another chance.

     

    Hajj Mabrur holds seminar

    Hajj Mabrur Ventures Limited (HMV) will on Sunday hold a seminar for the would-be pilgrims.

    The annual seminar will take place at the University of Lagos Mosque auditorium, Akoka, Lagos.

    A statement by its HMVL Director Alhaji Dhulkifli Adewunmi, said the seminar is germane to the success of the religious exercise.

    Pilgrims, he said, need adequate information about the dos and don’ts of the exercise.

    “Aside this, Saudi Arabia is a no-nonsense country that hold strict her laws and would not hesitate to punish whoever flout those laws. So, we need to enlighten our pilgrims on this and other salient issues,” he said.

    Alhaji Adewunmi assured the pilgrims of a successful pilgrimage once they obey the rules and regulations guiding the holy exercise.

  • Muslim Marital Homes

    Muslim Marital Homes

    “Marriage is part of my tradition. Whoever is capable but refuses to marry is not part of me” Prophet Muhammad (SAW)

    Preamble

    Today’s article is not new. It is only being recalled here due to popular demand. When it was first published in this column some years ago, many Muslim couples in Nigeria saw it as a true mirror of their matrimonial homes. Many others took it for a matrimonial handbook capable of serving as a guide for the conduct of their homes. Yet, many who missed it at that time but only heard of it from others who read it have severally called for its repetition in this column. And because of the value it may add to Muslim homes and the role it may play in resolving conflicts in those homes, ‘The Message’ decided to re-publish it here today for the benefit of all and sundry. Here it goes:

    “A radical 20th century India-born British journalist and novelist, George Orwell, wrote a famous allegorical novel entitled ‘ANIMAL FARM’ in 1945. His focus in that novel was mainly on the Russian revolution of 1917 which he satirised venomously. While writing the novel, that social critic never thought that any possible ripples could arise from it which might have a backlash effect on the entire human social life in the 21st century. But ironically, with the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), in the early 1990s the read application of that book became manifest on the entire social life of today’s mankind. This will be explained shortly.

     

    Institution of Marriage

    Perhaps no institution in human life is as temporally or spiritually valuable as marriage. This is an indisputable fact across nations, races cultures and religions. Marriage is the main axis around which the continuity of human existence on earth rotates. It is either a pivotal source of decency or a clear cause of malfeasance in any given society. Without marriage, human societies would have been like Orwell’s Animal Farm. And were Orwell alive today he would have probably redirected the attention of his novel towards the matrimonial homes globally.

     

    Rate of Dissolution

    Nowadays, the rate of dissolution of marriages is by far higher than the rate at which marriages are consummated. At least, going by the local customs of the various tribes in Nigeria one can conclude that marriages are conducted weekly throughout the country as against the daily occurrences of their dissolution.

     

    Definition

    Some people define marriage as a legalization of intercourse and procreation of children without any reference to its divine sanctity. Others call it a social contract culturally or legally consummated between two consenting mature people of opposite genders. The latter definition is also silent on the obligation and responsibilities of such a union. In Islam, marriage is much more than both definitions. It is on the one hand, a promise made by the male gender who is soon to become the husband and on the other, a trust personified by the female gender who is soon to become the wife in the custody of a husband. Thus, marriage is an agreement between two families aimed at creating an avenue for continuity of social life through a common social venture jointly managed by the two representatives of both families in their bid to set up a home of their own.

     

    Essence of Life

    In the life of any serious human being, three events are fundamentally essential. These are birth, marriage and death. The three form the axis around which the entire human life rotates. All other events in human life are merely peripheral.

    Throughout the world today (Nigeria inclusive), marriage has become a balloon which can be casually inflated in one minute and deflated in the next minute. It has been taken for a mere chess game played for the fun of the players as well as that of the onlookers. To most Nigerians of today, marriage is not more important than dining, wining, singing and dancing. It has been reduced to mere fun and entertainment which many young couples see as a legitimate means of actualizing sexual urge that would have been perceived as a social aberration without passing through a formal matrimonial communion.

     

    Parable of Marriage

    While conducting a marriage in Lagos sometime ago, yours sincerely compared a marital couple to a pair of scissors which has two blades. Each of those blades faces a different direction. The one faces right whilst the other faces left. These positions are not naturally interchangeable. Yet, with the nuptial tie knotting them together in the middle to seal their common destiny, the two blades jointly work assiduously in their move to certify the essence of that togetherness.

    Looking at a pair of scissors very carefully, one will discover that the two blades therein sometimes stick closely together and sometimes stand out separately. Their meeting and parting randomly accentuate the essence of their togetherness. Through those meeting and parting, the two blades of the pair of scissors communicate effectively and mutually function dutifully. And when they stay apart, the tendency is for some intruders to assume that they cannot jointly function again and therefore attempt to penetrate the gap between them. But as soon as that intruder comes in, the two blades of the scissors quickly come together to crush it. There is a marital lesson for human beings to learn from this.

     

    Division of Labour

    No husband can play the role of his wife. Neither can any wife play the role of her husband. The division of labour in the matrimonial home as naturally ordained is the main determinant of the separation of powers in that home.

    Just as the two blades of a pair of scissors face different directions but work intimately together so should any marital couple do. If the blades stick together permanently without opening and closing, the tendency is for them to rust away and become useless to each other. And, if on the other hand, they stay apart consistently thereby leaving the scissors in a permanently open position they will never be able to jointly carry out the assignment for which they are manufactured. Thus, through random meeting and parting of those blades, the pair of scissors is able to perform its duty without any hindrance. And as the blades grow older, they become weaker and less active. So is the situation with marital couples.

     

    Implications

    Unfortunately today, marriage has become like the country called Nigeria where projects are hurriedly executed to satisfy the secret (under the table) terms of contract without any consideration for the quality and maintenance of such projects. When two young people of different genders and backgrounds are coming together to form a couple, they hardly think of the implications of such a union in terms of individual differences and the possible challenges that may emanate from those differences. Young couples of today perceive love either from beauty point of view or from endowed wealth or even from pleasure of sexual intercourse. And that is a way of turning infatuation or possession of material wealth or sexual enjoyment into love which is usually the cause of marital collapse.

    In marriage, love develops only gradually with mutual understanding especially when it becomes evident that one spouse accommodates the weaknesses of the other through tolerance and compromise. The attraction which beauty or wealth or intercourse engenders can only at best generate tentative LIKENESS and not LOVE in the real sense. This is where the foundation of divorce is often laid even before the consummation of marriage. There is nothing called love in a matrimonial home in the absence of thorough study and understanding of each other as well as compromises and tolerance. It is not enough to claim mutual understanding through mutual study during courtship. No matter how long it may last, the period of courtship can never be enough for any couple to fully understand each other. That period is usually to impress each other while the tendency to pretend is often disguised. That is why and Arab poet once coined a couplet thus: “A liking eye sees nothing wrong in the conduct of the liked one; but a hateful eye only searches for the faults in the hated person”

    Marriage is a serious business which must be seriously negotiated initially by the concerned couples and their parents or guardians. At the courtship stage, the concerned couple must not only discuss the modalities of coming together as husband and wife they must also negotiate the factors of sustaining their marriage through proper maintenance of the home. Any marriage without a programme of maintenance and sustenance will become like dew used by a farmer to water his crops into fruition.

     

    The Prophet’s recommendation

    In his recommendation to Muslim men searching for wives, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said: “Wives should be married on the basis of four factors: beauty, wealth, family background and faith”. He however emphasized (Islamic) FAITH as the strongest factor for Muslim couples. He did not recommend such factors to women knowing the difficulties that women might face in making choices of men but he strongly recommended that a woman’s consent in her marriage is germane. The Prophet then concluded that any marriage without such consent is invalid. This means that forcing a girl into marriage without her consent is illegal in Islam.

    Marriages are globally collapsing at an alarming rate today because couples and their families have closed their eyes to two key factors in maintaining the matrimonial home. These factors are COMMUNICATION and MUTUAL RESPECT. No marriage can ever survive or succeed without a thorough pre-marital counseling by parents, guardians or religious clerics who must not only tutor potential couples but also demonstrate practically to them how marriages are sustained using their own marriages as examples. Newly married couples often dream of building their homes on the models of certain older couples in the society. The consummators of new marriages in the Muslim community must be   part of those models.

     

    Communication

    There can be no matrimonial peace in the absence of adequate communication between husband and wife based on mutual respect. Nothing signals the collapse of a marriage more than the breakdown of communication in the home. A marriage without communication is like a house without door. Of course, the children from such homes are mostly the victims of any ensued divorce. If a marriage is initiated and consummated with communication, how can anybody think that such a marriage can be sustained without communication?

    The real essence of marriage is for husband and wife to disagree in order to agree, not the other way round. And in the process of disagreeing or agreeing, communication is the only key instrument without which the home can never remain intact.

    Any couple that closes the matrimonial door to communication has surely opened that door for divorce. Even divorce, whether through mutual agreement or through court injunction, must be communicated in one way or another to both parties.

    In Islam, one of the most potent ways of ventilating communication in the home is to worship and pray together at least twice in a day (morning and evening). A Muslim husband must at least be knowledgeable enough to lead his family in Salat and to preach and pray for such family daily. Through such worship and prayer, many knotty matrimonial issues are untied. And   besides, the children will learn to be good-mannered and to resolve disagreements among themselves. That is why Muslims are urged to acquire knowledge about their religion. The spate of divorce in any society today is much higher among the ignorant couples than the knowledgeable ones.

     

    The Role of Mosques

    By remaining indifferent to the rate of divorce among Nigerian Muslims, the Mosques are shirking one of their foremost responsibilities. It has been said repeatedly in this column that Mosques are not meant for Salat alone. As a matter of fact, Salat can be observed congregationally or individually anywhere that is clean and not necessarily in a building called Mosque. A Mosque in Islam does not have to be a building if its purpose is just to observe Salat. That is why Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said “the entire earth has been made the Mosque for Muslims once it is purified”.

    One of the fundamental duties of a Mosque is to sanitize the society by finding resolution to conflicts. And since no conflict can be more devastating to any society than that of the matrimonial homes it becomes incumbent on every Mosque to have a Conflict Resolution Committee constituted by learned scholars and headed by an Islamic jurist.

    As a duty, the Imam of the Mosque must also be well educated enough to educate the congregation in his Mosque on the need to take their matrimonial conflicts to the Mosques or Shari‘ah courts where such conflicts can be solemnly resolved rather than to customary courts where marriages are dissolved with fiat. Matrimonial conflicts are not new to any modern society. What seems new and worrisome about them is the geometric leap they are taking these days.

     

    Reflection

    The very first conflict in human history was over marriage. And that was the conflict between the first and second sons of Adam (Qabil and Habil) otherwise known as Cane and Abel over the choice of wife. And the genesis of the perennial disagreement between Muslims and non-Muslims of Semitic origin in the world today was the matrimonial rivalry between the two wives of Prophet Ibrahim, Zahrah and Hajarah, (Sarah and Hagar).  If the Mosques cannot resolve conflicts arising from the marriages they consummated to save Muslim homes, what other conflicts can they claim to be resolving? It is embarrassingly shameful to see hundreds of Muslim marriages demolished by customary courts while the Mosques keep aloof.

     

    Conclusion

    Today, Nigerian society is prone to danger of insecurity mostly because of matrimonial instability. And the more marriages are consummated, the more matrimonial homes crumble. Who, then, will save the society by saving our matrimonial homes? That is the biggest question of this time which is begging for a very positive answer. The security of Nigeria as a country depends very much on the stability of matrimonial homes. That is why emphasis should rather be laid on stability of homes than on distribution of contraceptives for the purpose of reducing procreation. There can be no peaceful nation without peaceful homes. This is a panacea for national insecurity. The battle for Nigeria’s future peace is rather in the matrimonial homes than in the Sambisa forests of this world.

     

    God bless our homes.  

  • The parable of death

    The parable of death

    Preamble

    The corpse of another prominent Nigerian has just been brought back to country for burial today after weeks of self-deception in the name of culture. Such is the common experience especially in the southern part of the county where to be born or to die abroad is ignorantly considered a prestige.

    Historians never agreed on when and where the first human couple, Adam and Hawau (Eve), died. Some claimed that they died and were buried in India. Others believed they lived and died in the Gulf area of the Middle East. According to the latter’s account, which Muslims tend to believe, Adam and Hawau met at a place near Makkah called Arafah which later became the general assembly centre of Muslim Pilgrims. The account suggested that after their expulsion from Paradise, they lived partly in the valley of Makkah and partly in Jeddah (75 kilometres away by the Red Sea).

    The duo, Adam and Hawau, were said to have left Paradise separately following their expulsion only to meet later at ‘Arafah (which means recognition) after a long period of wondering. Their sojourn in that region of the world shows that the Middle East was the first place of human settlement. The existence of an ancient rectangular house called Ka‘bah is a testimony to this assertion. Hawau was believed to have died and interned in Jeddah, which is why the place was named Jeddah an Arabic word meaning Grandmother.

     

    The first human death

    Neither Adam nor his wife Hawau knew anything called death until one of their first two sons killed the other.  The two sons – Habil and Qabil (Abel and Cain) had clashed over the choice of a wife. The tussle led to the killing of Habil by Qabil. But the focus here is neither on the cause of their clash nor the killing of one by the other. Rather, it is on the lesson which Allah wanted to teach humanity through that episode.

     

    The lesson

    Shortly after killing his brother, Qabil fell into a dilemma over what to do with the corpse. He was not worried as much by his conscience over his crime as to what would become of the corpse. But while thinking on what to do, two birds of the Roller family appeared before him and started fighting each other. In no time, one killed the other.  The strange scene attracted the attention of Qabil like a tragic drama. He watched the incident with full attention as the killer bird used its legs to dig a grave-like hole, pushed the corpse of its vanquished brother into it and covered it up. From that wonderful scene, Qabil got the idea of what to do with the corpse of his brother. And he buried him. Thus, the lesson was learnt that this human being created from the earth would eventually return to the earth.

    What Qabil did not know at that time, however, was that the two birds, which became his teachers, were Angels. And the lesson learnt from their experience was not just about death and burial but also about when and where to bury a human corpse. If Allah had wanted ceremony and ostentation to be lavished on burial, the killer bird would have demonstrated same in the drama. Qabil did not move the corpse of Habil to any other place for burial because his bird teacher did not do that. Like the killer bird, he also buried his brother at the very spot where the latter breathed his last.

     

    When death strikes

    In Islam, death is supposed to be the determinant of where the demised should be buried. Death takes life at a particular time and place according to its own natural schedule of duty. It gives no hint of the exact time and place to strike. And, after striking, it does not anticipate the transfer of a corpse across any major distance. That is why the body of any demised person starts to decompose just hours after it becomes lifeless. To confirm this, the Quran chapter 31: 24 says: “No soul knows what it will do tomorrow. No soul knows where it will die and be buried”.

     

    The first Muslim group

    The first group of the Makkans who embraced Islam at its inception suffered so much severe persecution in the hands of pagans that they had to migrate to Abyssinia (Now Ethiopia) for safety. While there, a number of them died and their wives and children became widows and orphans respectively. All those who died in Abyssinia were buried in that country. Another group of the earliest Muslims migrated to Taif. A number of them also died there leaving widows, widowers and orphans behind. Their bodies were not transferred back to Makkah for burial

    Over this, some unbelievers may argue that those emigrants were fugitives who had no courage to bring back the corpses of their relatives for burial. But what of those who died in the battle of Badr in which Makkah pagans came all the way from Makkah, a distance of about 650 kilometers away, to engage the Muslims in a war in Madinah? The corpses of the Muslims who died in that imposed war were buried right there at the battle ground despite the nearness of Badr to Madinah and the Muslims’ victory in that battle?

     

    The Prophet’s example

    It should be remembered that one of the most painful deaths to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was that of his uncle, Hamzah, the great warrior who fell to the spear of a Makkan pagan in the battle of Uhd and was buried right there at the foot of mountain Uhd in Madinah where the battle took place. In fact, no one who died in another town or country among the Muslims was ever brought back to his original home for burial. Not even the corpse of the Prophet or that of any of his disciples who died in Madinah was returned to Makkah for burial. The reason for this is to avoid the transfer of bitterness and mental agony arising from the death of a person from one place to another.

     

    Implication

    Not only that, it is also to avoid the unnecessary strain and expenses which such transfer can unleash on some people. That was why great disciples like Abubakr, Umar Bn Khattab, Uthman Bn Affan had to be buried in Madinah where they died rather than Makkah where they were born. Also, Ali bn Abi Talib and Mu’awiyah bn Abi Sufyan were buried in Iraq and Syria respectively where they served as caliphs and died.  Even Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet and 72 others who were massacred by the forces of Yazid bn Mu’awiyah at Karbalau in Iraq had to be buried where they were massacred despite the nobility of their pedigree.

    In Islam, death, like birth has no propensity for any display of aristocracy. And, ascribing one to it is a sign of ignorance and primitivism. Islam abhors extravagance in whatever form and it admonishes against it. That is why the great religion does not take kindly to commercial exhibition of coffins and ostentatious funerals. These are actually prohibited in Islam. Coffins can be used to convey corpses from the place of death or mortuary to the cemetery but such coffins must not be ornamentally decorated. Neither must the Muslim corpses be extravagantly shrouded for burial.

    The idea of keeping the corpse in a morgue for a long time after death, to allow for ostentatious funeral and extravagant spending in a society where poverty is manifest, is an act of callousness based on ignorance. Neither the expensive shroud nor the ornamented coffin with which the corpse is buried has any benefit to the soul of the deceased. It is sheer wastage, which has no use even for the relatives of the deceased. That idea, which is rampant, especially in some parts of Nigeria today, is hardly different from cremation done by the Buddhists, the Hindus and others with fanfare in the Far East.  Both are a product of ignorance and vain-glory.

     

    Blind imitation

    As usual, Nigerians do not copy anything negative without surpassing the original. Fraud and narcotics as well as terrorism are some examples. The fashion now in vogue in Nigeria is for any public official or private moneybag to travel abroad for medical treatment at the slightest feeling of an ailment. It is as if Nigerian money is outlawed from providing the best hospital here in Nigeria. The concept is to separate the rich from the poor since an exclusive hospital for the rich will sound illogical in a country peopled overwhelmingly by with paupers. Even when some of those sick travellers will be treated abroad by their fellow Nigerians, they do not see anything wrong in spending their ill-gotten money abroad to the detriment of their home country. They seem to enjoy being flown back home lifeless if only to display aristocracy in death. Thus, your death is not considered newsworthy unless your corpse is flown into the country via Muritala Muhammad International Airport (MMIA), Lagos or Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja for public display. Yet no lesson is learnt that even Muritala Muhammad and Nnamdi Azikiwe died and were buried here in Nigeria. Can anybody cite a clear difference between death in Europe or America and the one in Nigeria? Why must our money be audaciously stolen alive in Nigeria and brazenly spent in death abroad?

     

    Extravagance

    With the huge amount of money spent by Nigerian sick travellers on treatments abroad and on flying their corpses back home, one can understand why Nigerians are so wretched that their lives are not worth more than a dollar per head per day despite the billions of dollars accruing to the country from our oil wells. It is necessary to thank God however, that though ‘Tokunbo’ products dumped in Nigeria daily are uncountable, the human corpses amongst them are those of the aristocrats and not of the innocent indigent class.

     

    Leveller of mankind      

    Death is a leveller of mankind. It does not distinguish between the rich and the poor.

    We shall all die willy-nilly and we shall all be buried in the belly of the same mother earth where the bones of masters and servants or those of sworn enemies may struggle together for space. Mother earth can be described as man’s inseparable companion. She accompanies man day and night, in life and in death. She surpasses biological mothers in playing her role in the life of man. From a chip of her natural being, man is said to have been created. Allah tells us in Qur’an that “From her (the earth) ‘We’ created you and into her belly ‘We’ shall return you”.

    In playing the role of a mother, the earth carries man on her back while the latter remains alive. And in death, she incubates him in her belly in readiness for the resurrection that will see him through the inevitable Day of Judgment. In that process, there is a similarity between the duties of a primary mother (the earth) and that of a secondary mother otherwise known as biological mother especially in respect of conception and delivery.

    While the biological mother cares for man only when she and man are alive, the mother earth cares for him both in life and in death. Unlike that of the biological mother, the life span of the mother earth is indefinite.

     

    Age of the Earth

    Some scientists have given us different ages of the earth using all sorts of technological instruments. But the only authentic statement on that can come from the Almighty Allah Who created the earth. If scientists have the means of telling us the age of the earth, do they also have the means of determining her life span? The earth is not just a carrier of unlimited weight; she is also a scale of unlimited measure. She weighs the load on her head as well as the one in her belly and balances them up for natural equanimity.

    Without the earth, mountains and oceans would have no habitat to call their own and the long term fossils which turn into what we call minerals would have had nowhere to hibernate. Before all these and millions of other unidentified matters came into existence, the earth had been. And when all of them might have vanished into permanent oblivion, according to their scheduled time, the earth will continue to be until natural termination time comes.

    We know that man was created from the earth. We know that the earth accommodates all living and non-living things on and in her. What we do not know is the source of the earth in creation. From what was the earth created? In luring us to reasoning, Allah has severally called the attention of man to the nature of certain creatures like the mountains, the valleys, the oceans and the seas, the minerals and the human and animal fossils buried in the earth as well as the varieties of plants and insects which dot the earth like a galaxy of stars on the Milky Way. He has also challenged man to observe the very nature of the wonderful carpet called the earth.

     

     No difference

    The earth in America or China or Australia is not different from that of Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or Italy. And no earth is superior to another except with Allah’s conferment of sacredness.

    Were the aristocrats privileged to calve out a separate portion of the earth for themselves, they would have restricted the masses to a disadvantaged area of the earth. But the thinking of man is different from the planning of Allah. Celebration of funerals so flamboyantly as often exhibited in Nigeria is nothing more than celebration of vanity which fetches the celebrator no profit. In Islam, it is ordained to care for the dead in spirit and in action. But such should not at the expense of the living. Doing so is a glaring evidence of ignorance which no civilised people would ever want to pursue.

  • Iran: Netanyahu faces Obama

    Iran: Netanyahu faces Obama

    Whenever imperialists penetrate a territory they pilage it devastatingly and subjugate the juggernauts therein almost irredeemably. That is surely their act”.  Q. 27:34

     

    Monologue

    Conspiracy is the most deadly instigator of war. It has consistently been the the most reliable weapon for the survival of imperialists whether in the primordial or contemporary times. But where a strong conspiracy is countered by another equally strong conspiracy within an imperial hegemony the tendency is for the bubble to burst. That has invariably been the cause of the fall of empires and the undoing of powerful regimes throughout human history. The break up, in 1991, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is the latest example of this assertion.

     

    The gathering Clouds

    Now, there are indications that some clouds are gathering in the horizon with the threat of a tempest which consequence is quite unpredictable. It is all about the recently sealed agreement between the Western Powers and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme which had given the Western Powers many sleepless nights before now. Subsequent to that agreement, a controversy ensued, especially in the United States, on whether or not the agreement that allowed Iran to continue but reduce the tempo of her nuclear programme was desirable at all. One of the foremost proponents of that agreement is the United States herself led by President Barack Obama who has become the self-appointed spokesman for its support and is now championing a campaign for it.

    It may sound ironic that the same Obama who championed the opposition to the Iranian nuclear programme and even initiated and recommended sanctions to American allies against Iran is also the one championing the campaign for the   acceptance of that country’s nuclear programme. But in international diplomacy, that cannot be strange as it only shows the momentary reality on the ground. Based on experience, Obama’s contention is that the Western Allies only have a choice between acceptance of Iranian nuclear programme and a war as he emphasized that the alternative to the earlier is the latter. Apparently, Obama has seen what other members of the alliance are yet to see.

     

    The Jewish Position

    On the other hand, Israel, the only nuclear power in the entire Middle-East, which now feels threatened by Iran’s seeming rivalry, has become so jittery over Obama’s stand on this nuclear issue that she has quickly initiated a massive media campaign against it and voted an initial $1.7 million for that campaign. Incidentally, the current recess of the American Senate has provided an opportunity for that Jewish State to lobby the American Senators against passing a bill which Obama is planning to present to the Senate very soon on the matter. Thus, a battle line of propaganda has been drawn between Barack Obama’s Democrat regime and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jewish fright. And, of course, the American Senate is the main arena of that diplomatic battle.

    Just two days ago (Wednesday, August 5, 2015) while President Obama was addressing the American citizens, through the media, on this volatile issue, some hundreds of American Jews took to American streets to protest against Obama’s proposed bill and continuation of Iran’s nuclear programme. Meanwhile, some analysts have been toying with some diplomatic questions relating to this matter: Can Israel really confront America, her surrogate parent (that helped her to acquire nuclear power) on this issue? Is America, a well known belligerent nation, only dramatizing for the world to see with the intention of giving an excuse to make a u-turn if she fails in this controversial issue? Can America sincerely jettison Israel, her surrogate child and dedicated policeman of the Middle-East? There are many more pushing questions for which the days ahead must provide answers. And the world is waiting.

     

    Genesis of the Crisis

    Retrospectively, the genesis of the face off between the West and Iran took roots in the latter’s unexpected revolution of 1979 which shut her door against the West’s economic exploitation of her citizens. It was 36 years last February (2015), since Iran jumped on the world stage with a surprising revolution that beat the West hands down. February 11, 1979 was the climax of a struggle, in that country, which began in 1963 between the oppressed people seeking independence from the shackles of imperialism and the implacable oppressors that wanted to keep that country’s innocent peasants in perpetual subservience by using the imperial stool of Shah Pahlavi.

    The success of that revolution has since changed the grand design of the Western powers for the Muslim world. That grand design was first expressed by a British Prime Minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bennerman in 1907 when he observed as follows:

    “There are people who control spacious territories teeming with manifest and hidden resources.  They dominate the intersections of world routes. Their lands were the cradles of human civilizations and religions. These people have one faith, one language and the same aspirations. No natural barriers can isolate these people from one another….If, per chance, this nation were to be unified into one state, it would then take the face of the world into its hands and would separate Europe from the rest of the world. Taking these considerations seriously, a foreign body should be planted in the heart of this nation to prevent the convergence of its wings in such a way that it could exhaust its powers in never- ending wars. It could also serve as a spring board for the West to gain its coveted objects”.

    Sir Bennerman’s observation, following a discovery that the Middle-East would control 1/5 of the world’s wealth was in further pursuance of an earlier demand by Theodor Herzl, a leader of the Zionist movement founded in 1879. Herzl, an Austrian Jewish lawyer and journalist demanded as follows:

    “Let sovereignty be granted us (Jews) over a portion of the globe large enough to satisfy the rightful requirements of a nation; the rest, we shall manage by ourselves…”

     

    The Balfour Declaration

    In response to Theodor Herzl’s demand, another British Prime Minister, James Arthur Balfour issued a devastating declaration that now bears his name (Balfour Declaration). That 1917 declaration has since put the entire Middle East in an incessant turmoil. The declaration that conceded a major part of Palestine to the Zionists as a home read in part:

    “His majesty’s Government views which favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use its best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective…. The rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country shall not be prejudiced by the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”

    To facilitate that objective effectively, some other Middle East countries had to be incapacitated economically and politically by excising from them, a juicy chunk of their lands. Thus, Lebanon was excised from Syria and Kuwait from Iraq. The strategy was to cause a dissension among the citizens of those Countries with the intention of breaking the bond of Muslim unity which Bennerman had targeted in his infamous 1907 speech quoted above.

     

    The logical Question

    How does Iran come into this when she is not an Arab Country? That is the logical question that anybody who is not quite familiar with the Middle East and the intricacies of its political and economic set up will ask. Naturally, Iran is affected by three major factors: Politics, economy and culture. And by culture here, we mean ISLAM. Iran is a foremost Islamic Country even if her official language is not Arabic. And, as an Islamic Country, whatever affects other Muslim Countries must affect her.

     

    Iranian Revolution

    No one believed in 1979 that what started like a small political billow, initiated by Iran’s unarmed Mullahs in the city of Qum, could grow into such a great magnitude of political ‘earthquake’. And so, by the time the foggy dust from that billow settled, a new Iran had emerged from the debris of the old. Thus, against the wish and expectation of the capitalist West, the secular, monarchical Iran became an Islamic republic. The drama was quite electrical.

    Characteristic of the West, all hands were on deck, at that time, to ensure that an Islamic republic did not succeed the tyrannical monarchy headed by the Shah Pahlavi, heavily backed up by the oppressive West. America was most active in that ambitious but vain effort. She would not easily allow the massive benefit she had been enjoying for years in that oil-rich country, under the Shah regime, to slip out of her hands just like that. Thus, under the pretext of wanting to rescue her citizens from the siege laid by Iranian students on that country’s embassy, in Tehran, the US attempted an invasion of the country. The espionage activities by the American diplomats, inside that embassy, against the new Islamic government in Iran had warranted the siege.

    While a number of US F15 bomber jets were approaching Iran, the then American President Jimmy Carter engaged his country’s press in a momentary chat without giving any hint of the impending military operation. The tactics was to divert the attention of the press and that of the country from the illegal Pentagon’s military expedition. But no sane person can ever fault the contents of the Qur’an. More than 1400 years before that incident, a verse of the Qur’an had been revealed to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) thus: “They (the unbelievers) scheme, and Allah schemes. Allah is the supreme schemer”. Q. 3:54.

     

    Why Jimmy Carter failed

    Jimmy Carter’s thought was that by the time he would be finishing with the press the news would have reached him that America had successfully invaded Iran. He had therefore intended to announce the news of his ‘great’ successful scheme to the press. And that would have served as his impetus for wining that year’s election for a second term in office. But, as Allah would want it, instead of the expected success news, what he got was a shock of his life. Two of the F15 fighters deployed for the operation miraculously collided in the air just at the point of entering Iran crashing with their contents, and consuming the lives of 16 top air force officers on board while the other jet fighters had to turn back having run into confusion. When this devastating news reached Carter, it was too much to hide and it quickly became a public knowledge.

    Thus, the mighty, imperialist America failed woefully with her technology, in circumstances she has never been able to analyze and explain convincingly. With that scheme, it became obvious that Jimmy Carter of the Democrat Party had dug his own political grave. And of course, he lost that year’s election to the cowboy turned Politician, (Ronald Reagan) of the Republican Party. For about 444 days (well over a year), thereafter, the 52 American diplomats held hostage in the American Embassy in Tehran remained under the siege of the Iranian students. It took high-level diplomacy, through third party countries, to get them released.

     

    The current Nuclear Concern

    Thus, the cold relationship between Iran and the West further deteriorated recently when Iran started a nuclear project with which to prop up her economy. America responded with a threat saying the United States would not tolerate any nuclear project in Iran because she could not trust that Islamic Republic of Iran. And of course, America’s voice was re-echoed by the United Nations, through the mouth of the latter’s Secretary General, Ban Ki-moo. After all, it is only a fool who will not know that the UN, as presently constituted, is the greyhound of the US through which the latter randomly barks at the rest of the world.

    But for the recent Iraqi episode that became regrettable for America and of course, the North Korean case, which has become a cancerous sore on the head of a rabid dog that the US represents, another Gulf war would have been in plan by now. What most people did not know is that the secret of American military gangsterism around the world is neither due to technological advancement, nor military superiority per se. America’s 1979 failed rescue mission in Iran has confirmed this. That secret is rather in her ability to cause dissension among other nations and races of the world.

     

    Conclusion

    Iran has never been a prey to America’s direct military aggression because she has never played a fool dancing to the sour music of that predatory country. But one fact that has become clear about the US political trend, ever since her withdrawal from isolationism in 1945, needs to be mentioned here. Her internal politics has regularly been dictated by her foreign policy. Thus, many American Presidents have either won or lost elections at home due to their adopted foreign policies. Will this also repeat itself? The days ahead will answer these questions as events continue to unfold.

  • Of JAMBGATE and Nigerian Law School

    Of JAMBGATE and Nigerian Law School

    “Surely, Allah does not change the situation of a community until that community is ready for a positive change” Q. 13:11 

     

    Preamble

    The Nigerian mass media throbbed, last week, with the shocking news of an unprecedented scandal allegedly perpetrated by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in relation to post JAMB examinations and admission into Nigerian Universities for 2015/2016 academic session. The strange game is tagged ‘JAMBGATE’ by this column (The Message).

     

    The Shocking News

    According to the shocking news, which spontaneously caused a national brouhaha, JAMB had surreptitiously shortchanged thousands of Nigerians by unilaterally changing the choices of applicants for admission into certain Universities without the knowledge of those applicants. For instance, names of applicants who made Universities of Nigeria, Lagos, Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello, Obafemi Awolowo, Benin, Calabar and others their choices of study were sent to certain private Universities or public Universities far away from the ones they chose without any recourse to them.

    It was a monumental fraud typical of the impunity with which the immediate past Nigerian Federal government was known. The cat was first let out of the bag at the University of Lagos where hundreds of parents and their wards resorted to protests even as some of them took JAMB to court. Anyway, enmeshing in such a scandalous act is not strange about JAMB.

     

    In Retrospect

    In the 2009 for instance, the University Matriculation Exam (UME) in Nigeria was subject to serious controversy when the poorest results ever released by that body almost caused a revolution. Much to JAMB’s embarrassment, the spokesmen for the Board later revealed that the machines which optically graded the papers had erroneous answers and the JAMB changed some students’ scores by as much as 15%. Ever since, there has hardly been a year without some examination skirmishes continually paving way to public loss of confidence in that Board. Surely, something fundamental is wrong with JAMB which requires sanitization.

     

    Reaction

    Reacting to the alleged scandal, the Federal Ministry of Education ordered an immediate reversal of that obnoxious act which was not known until the affected candidates had reached their post JAMB examination centres. Although the ministerial intervention was welcomed as a momentary relief for the affected candidates and their parents, analysts think that the highly embarrassing case must not end there. They contend that the scandal should be officially investigated by an independent body and the culprits be brought to book. To some observers, that scandal was part of the usual ‘under table’ bunko by which most Nigerian public office holders are known and which gave Nigeria the international appellation of a ‘corrupt nation’.

     

    Observers’ Thought

    The similitude of that scam, according to those observers, was like the case of the so-called fuel subsidy removal which Goodluck Jonathan government callously forced on the already wretched masses of Nigeria to further deepen their abyss of penury in 2012. The end result of that evil policy was a monumental official scam that is still haunting today Nigeria like a demonic spectre. It seems that the customers of the Jonathan’s era of scandalous impunity are yet to realize that a clement wind of CHANGE has begun to sweep our dirty country clean hence the current JAMBGATE.

    Were the government of impunity still in place, the JAMBGATE saga would have, as usual, been upheld to justify the usual ‘under the table’ deal that would have forced thousands of qualified University admission seekers to either go to private University or forget University education altogether. That is Nigeria for you a country in which sanity, until two months ago, was an aberration and impunity was the rule.

     

    Information

    The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) was established in 1977 by the then Federal Military Government of Nigeria. It has since become Nigeria’s official Entrance Examination Board for candidates below the Advanced Level (A/L) education seeking admission into all Universities in the country. Before then, the existing federal universities in Nigeria (numbering seven by 1974) conducted their own ‘concessional’ entrance examinations and admitted their students according to their individual policies. With time, however, that system of admission was observed by the federal government as having limitations through a waste of time and resources in the process of administering the examination especially on the part of the candidates.

    The Committee of Vice-Chancellors therefore felt concerned about the general clumsiness in the coordination of admissions into the nation’s universities especially when the problem of admission into the universities became more acute with the establishment of additional six universities in 1976 by the Federal military government.

     

    Duties of JAMB

    In addition to its functions, JAMB is also supposed to undertake the following duties statutorily:

    Conducts the Universities Matriculation Examination (UME) and sends the results to Universities chosen by the candidates, so that each university selects and recommends candidates to JAMB for admission.

    Allows each university to conduct tests/interview termed screening for candidates (since . . .) before selecting those to recommend;

    Conduct similarly, entrance examination for candidate applying to Polytechnics and College of Education;

    Admits qualified candidates by Direct Entry to Universities that recommend them;

    Allows these institutions that operate Remedial Programmes to admit successful candidates, but announced in 2007 that it was counseling such from 2008. (For further information, please, see Perspectives on the History of Education in Nigeria, 2008).

     

    Key Departments of JAMB

    JAMB consists of eight key departments which statutorily carry out the day-to-day operations of the Board.  These are:

    1. Office of the Registrar which is headed by the Chief Executive who is appointed by the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, on the recommendation of the Ministry of Education. The Registrar is responsible for the execution of policies of the Board and the day-to-day running of the affairs of the Board.

    By law, the Registrar shall hold office in the first instance for a period of five years and shall be eligible for reappointment for the same period as the president may be pleased from time to time. It is through this process that all applicants do register and get printed results online.

     

    Comment

    With JAMB becoming the gateway to tertiary education in Nigeria that examination body must live up to its responsibilities by upholding the national trust reposed in it and by utilizing that trust to propel the potential greatness of Nigeria as a foremost African country. It is pertinent for JAMB to understand that any failure on its part is Nigeria’s failure in all spheres of life since without qualitative education any nation can be pronounced dead. Thus, with such a strategic position, JAMB must know that it cannot afford to take the Nigerian populace for granted.

    Like JAMB like Nigerian Law School

    For good observers of education in Nigeria, JAMBGATE could not have come as a surprise. What JAMB did to cause uproar last week is what the Nigerian Law School has been doing in recent time. As a matter of fact, it was as if JAMB borrowed an idea of a ‘profitable’ venture from the Nigerian Law School. How many Nigerians know today that the Nigerian Law School that was once the right of every Law graduate in the country to be qualified for practice has become a privilege for just a few?

     

    Point of Departure

    Unlike in the past when the test of the prowess of the legal profession in Nigeria was accentuated by the Nigerian Law School, the real accentuation of Law practice in the country today, in grooming the practitioners of that profession, has become an instrument of power in the hands of a few who hold sway in that School. Through the use of that power the children of the poor have been tacitly declared personal non-grata in the Law profession. For instance, out of about 6000 students of Nigerian Law School in 2013/2014 session, only about 2000 were able to cross the huddle of the Bar exam. Although that cannot be strictly attributed to administrative policy the conditions laid down for enrolment in the Law School are strict enough to dissuade some students from concentration.

     

    Objective of Decentralisation

    The original objective of decentralizing the Nigerian Law School was to enable the Law Students from each geographical zone to attend the Law School in his or her zone with convenience. But this was changed by the authorities of that School who are now allocating Law School campuses arbitrarily to those students irrespective of their zones of origin and depriving them the right of changing their allocations if they are not satisfied. For instance, students from the Southwest of Nigeria who wanted to attend the Lagos Law School were arbitrarily posted Yola, in Adamawa despite the Boko Haram threat to lives. And those from the North-West who chose Kano were posted to Enugu campus without an option. The cost of this alone especially for indigent students is distractive enough. Yet, these students will still be forcefully posted to anywhere for in the country for National Youth Service after their call to the Bar. What kind of country is this?

     

    Unaffordable Charges

    The exorbitant, unaffordable levies charged for reseat in the Bar exam have prevented thousands of potential Lawyers from becoming legal practitioners. The imposed cost of feeding per meal alone is enough to scare away any prospective Law student from enrolling in that School. Eventually, thousands of University graduates in Law who are unable to realize their dream by passing through the Law School have become like marauders roaming the streets of Nigeria like Egyptian gypsies of yore, after five years of rigour in the University. What kind of country is this? And in this case, what is the difference between JAMB and the Nigerian Law School?

     

    Autocratic Song

    The song of these days, as far as the Nigerian Law School is concerned is that ‘the Law Profession is not for the Poor’. And to emphasize that oppressive song, the tuition and other fees in that school have been taken beyond the affordability level of an ordinary Nigerian. Besides, all sorts of oppressive polices are being regularly formulated to reduce the number of Nigerian Lawyers drastically and to discourage new entrants into the profession. Thus, the Law profession in Nigeria is gradually becoming an exclusive right of the senior practitioners in the profession whose children are seen and treated as their heirs apparent. For how long will this be allowed in a country that claims to maintain human rights and freedom of exercising such rights? God save Nigeria.

  • A Season of Salvos

    A Season of Salvos

    This is supposed to be a season of festival and festivities for the Muslims all over the world. The festivities are necessitated by the completion of Ramadan fasting that lasted one full month and ended last Thursday. In a season like this, traditionally, messages of felicitations do flow across religious and ethnic boundaries as a token of tolerance and spiritual accommodation.

    At Easter and Christmas for instance, Muslims often send such messages to their Christian brethren. And at Eidul Fitr and Eidul Adha, Christians do reciprocate in the like manner.

    But this time around, something seemingly went wrong in Nigeria which left sour taste in the mouth and should not be repeated in future. Instead of the usual felicitations, what transpired between the two main religious bodies in Nigeria was quite different. Please, read the strange salvos as released through the mass media:

    First Salvo

    OLOYEDE, NIREC & MERCHANT OF LIES

    The attention of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) has been drawn to the series of lies spewed by the Secretary-General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and ex-Vice Chancellor, University of Ilorin, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, wherein, among other issues, he deceived Nigerians that:

    We have decided to speak because perception can be made stronger than reality. We can no longer continue to keep quiet because we are in a society that is gullible and where people swallow lies hook, line and sinker. The continuos (sic) attempt by Oloyede to mislead the public should not be allowed to succeed this time around. He has been giving an impression that every Christian leader in Nigeria, except his two friends, were dragged into the 2015 partisan politics. But good enough, he contradicted himself by saying that Muslim leaders under NSCIA decided to gang up against ex-President Goodluck Jonathan. He had claimed he is not a religious leader and this is just the problem the Nigerian Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) has been facing. NIREC cannot function because it is a conglomeration of religious leaders from one group and mix-grill of politicians and traditionalists on the other hand. That is the reason for all the confusion in NIREC.

    The likes of Oloyede have carefully, for his personal interest, with the blessing of his mentor, the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar 111, refused the true composition of religious leaders, thereby making NIREC ineffective. How do we explain the exclusion of respected Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi and astute Islamic preachers like Sheikh El-Zaki Zaki, an amiable President of Supreme Council for Islamic Preachers in Nigeria, Sheikh Mohammed Ahmed Ibn Nurain, from an umbrella body of religious leaders like NIREC, whereas CAN comprises all Christians in the country?

    We want to appeal to Oloyede, having admitted that he is not a religious leader to honorably resign from as the National Coordinator of NIREC for the organization to move foreward. We Christians did not raise any objection to the position he has been occupying for close to 10 years. But now that it is the turn of Christians to produce the Executive Secretary of NIREC, Oloyede, with the active connivance of of the Sultan of Sokoto, who is a co-chair of NIREC, has frustrated every move for NIREC to meet in the last two years. Yet, these same group of persons, turned around, polarized NIREC along ethnic and religious consideration, dishing out wrong impressions and lies why NIREC has not been meeting.

    We are also averse to the falsehood peddled by this merchant of lies that nothing serious should come out of the National Conference because to him, the decisions were taken based on errors of composition. According to him, the composition of delegates was anti-North and anti-Islam. But to the best of our knowledge Christians and Muslims had six delegates each. So how does the issue of religion and ethnicity arise? When did Oloyede, from Ogun State, become a Northerner to be their spokesperson?

    We are not ignorant of the plan of Oloyede and the Sultan of Sokoto not to allow the meeting of NIREC to hold, until the expiration of the tenure of Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor as CAN President. This is the reason for the last minute cancellation of the NIREC meeting scheduled for March this year in Abuja by the Sultan without consulting his co-chair, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor. Till today, the Sultan has offered no apology, no explanation and has shown no remorse. Yet, Oloyede and the Sultan have been dishing out lies at if it is Pastor Oritsejafor that doesn’t want NIREC to meet. This kind of politics of deceit by politicians on religious garb is what has brought Nigeria to its knees. Our Muslims brothers from the North should be wary of characters like Oloyede who are interested in stoking fires of religious and ethnic acrimony. Perhaps, only time will tell his true mission.

     Sunday Oibe, Director of National Issues,

         Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN)

    Second Salvo 

    THE RANTING OF A FRUSTRATED CLERIC

    The attention of the Muslim Ummah of Southwest Nigeria (MUSWEN) has been drawn to a Press Statement entitled ‘OLOYEDE, NIREC and MERCHANT OF LIES’ purportedly issued by the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and signed by one Sunday Oibe who claimed to be the Director of CAN’s National Issues.

    The bellicose press statement, quite uncharacteristic of CAN, was apparently issued by a clique of Christian charlatans who are masquerading in the cloak of religion within CAN. Ordinarily, the CAN we know very well which consists of decent gentlemen and women of dignity would not have issued such an unguarded statement, especially at this festival period of Eidul Fitr when congratulatory message from Nigerian Christian brethren to Nigerian Muslim Faithful was as usual expected.

    Thus, we refuse to believe that such a reckless statement attacking the personality of His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto and President-General of Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) as well as that of the NSCIA Secretary-General was issued by CAN.

    Issuing such a baseless and inflammatory press statement to attack the topmost leadership of the Nigerian Muslim Ummah in the name of CAN at this time confirms the fictitious source of the obnoxious press statement. Thus, we call on the genuine CAN leaders (not charlatans) to take a second look into the contents of that press statement purportedly issued on their behalves with a view to investigating its source because we do not think that such a statement with such a vulgar language could have emanated from the CAN’s ‘Glass House’ which Nigerian Muslims hold in very high esteem.

    As for using NIREC’s inability to hold meetings as the reason for issuing the belligerent statement by its seemingly frustrated issuers, MUSWEN hereby advises the NSCIA to maintain its usual cool-headedness and maturity in consigning nauseating statement to the refuse bin of nuisance without value where it rightly belongs.

    What NSCIA should rather concentrate upon this time is its ongoing contribution to overcoming the pervading insecurity as well as eradication of corruption in the land especially with the recent return of Nigeria’s $15 million surreptitiously funneled to South Africa early this year for clandestine importation of illegal arms into Nigeria by those charlatans, courtesy the new era of ‘CHANGE’.

    It is understandable that the perpetrators of such evil machination, having become like a beheaded snake struggling to smear the immaculate dresses around with its blood would want to pull anything with them to the abyss of oblivion. MUSWEN therefore calls on the NSCIA to ignore the ranting of such charlatans who think that by resorting to mudslinging they could divert public attention from their evil acts and draw undeserved sympathy to themselves. NSCIA is too busy now to be distracted by irrelevant noise from some sinking elements whose usual lotus has become sour. Eid Mubarak to all Nigerians!

    Femi Abbas, Media Consultant to MUSWEN

    Third Salvo

    Incidentally, the two salvos above coincided with another, far away in Britain. ‘The Message’ also brings you the benefit of that in the following report:

    “In a speech in Birmingham on the government’s five-year plan to defeat home-grown extremism, Mr. Cameron set out four major areas that needed attention: countering the “warped” extremist ideology, the process of radicalisation, the “drowning out” of moderate Muslim voices, and the “identity crisis” among some British-born Muslims.

    He said the focus of his speech was Islamist extremism – not Islam the religion – and that moderate Muslims also hated the “sick world view” of extremists. “I want to work with you to defeat this poison,” he said and listed a number of government’s strategies to be used in tackling extremism with possible focus on tacit gagging of the generality of Muslims in Britain.

    Fourth Salvo

    In a swift response to PM David Cameron’s speech in Birmingham, Dr. Shuja Shafi, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, issued the following statement:

     “We support sound evidence-based measures that confront terrorism effectively. Muslims across the world and in our country in particular, find the conduct and values of ‘Daesh’ to be abhorrent. We agree with the Prime Minister that we must de-glamourise the Daesh cause. It is neither revolutionary, nor cool, and it certainly is against the basic teachings of Islam. We all have a part to play in this, including the media.

    We worry, however, that these latest suggestions will set new litmus tests which may brand us all as extremists, even though we uphold and celebrate the rule of law, democracy and rights for all. Dissenting is a proud tradition of ours that must not be driven underground.

    Challenging extremist ideology is what we all want, but we need to define tightly and closely what extremism is rather than perpetuate a deep misunderstanding of Islam and rhetoric, which inevitably facilitates extremists to thrive.

    We have heard for too long now that Muslim communities either condone, or are not doing enough to condemn the extremists who act in their name. Yet, poll after poll indicates that this is not the case.

    Above all we must recognise that the paths to extremism and terrorism are complex and varied. Of course Daesh is barbaric and is based on a distortion of Islamic precepts but we must be careful not to be over-dramatic and simplistic. There is no magic solution that will make terrorism go away.

    We urge the Prime Minister once again to put his words into action – a one Nation Britain will emerge through dialogue and engagement with all sections of the community including mainstream Muslim organizations and those who have differing views.

    The threat of Daesh is real, as is the appeal they hold on some young people.  We should not drive young people into the arms of extremist recruiters by denying them a sense of dignity and self-worth. In this sense we welcome the Prime Minister’s call for better integration and for giving young people better life outcomes. But these measures should be pursued in spite of, not because of the terror threat we face.

    Above all we need to allow for real political issues to be discussed and debated robustly and not drive our youth underground for fear of being cast extremist”.

    (Daesh means surreptitious indoctrination through deliberate misinterpretation of fundamental religious tenets)

    Comment

    In a nutshell, what would have ordinarily passed for a joyous season of celebrations and felicitations ended up as one of accusations and stigmatisations along religious lines in both Nigeria and Britain. But should this be the case? That is the big question for the readers of this column to answer. Eid Mubarak!

  • Beyond Boko Haram

    Preamble

    This article was first published in this column in 2012. But despite its detailed analysis and the well researched impute of a prominent Nigerian of Christian faith in it, some religious charlatans who were seemingly sponsoring and benefitting from the Boko Haram carnage continued to insist on painting the truth black just to further enrich their evil benefit from that evil carnage. The exposure last year, of an illegal arms deal in South Africa by one of such foremost charlatans masquerading in the cloak of religion came to attest to the evil machination wrapped in the garb of religion by some Nigerian agents of Satan.

    With that landmark exposure and some subsequent revelations about the clandestine backers of the national calamity called Boko Haram, many readers of this column began to call for a repeat of the publication of this article. Thus, to oblige them the right of readership the article is brought back here today as found below:

     

    The Article

    “In the life of every nation, like that of every individual, there must be a time of tribulation. For truly religious people, such a tribulation is a test of faith and that of steadfastness. For an individual, passing or failing it depends very much on the strength of his or her faith and for a nation, the competence or otherwise of the leadership at the helm of affairs. Nigeria as a country is not an exception in this.

    For the past six years or thereabout, Nigerians have been forced to grapple with the intensity of an unprecedented insecurity culminating in bomb blasts continually but devastatingly killing and maiming human beings in their scores. This carnage which first began in 2006 with a major threat to the existence of Nigeria by some war mongering South-South youths has come to climax the decades of crises in the country engendered by economic, political, ethnic and religious motivations. And since the crises have constantly been engineered by government’s insensitive policies, it is instructive that the attitude of the same government towards those crises can hardly be suggestive of any serious readiness to proffer a permanent and sincere solution to them. The language that rents the air this time is ‘Boko Haram’. That language has virtually become a spectre putting both the government and the people on the run and giving them a fierce chase of their lives.

     

    Suffocation

    From whichever angle it may be perceived, Boko Haram is now a huge balloon of smoke oozing out of a protruding chimney and destructively polluting the air which everybody in Nigeria today is forced to inhale willingly or unwillingly. But unfortunately, rather than finding out the fireplace beneath the chimney that gives vent to the oozing smoke, the government just insists on dispelling the smoke even as the fire keeps burning. Granted that Boko Haram was inherited by the current regime just as the South-South militants’ menace was inherited by Yar’Adua regime that preceded this, nevertheless, the late President YarÁdua did not allow it to overwhelm Nigerians before finding a solution to it.

    The immediate past government’s idea of Boko Haram seemed to be quite different from what that evil body really was. In Goodluck Jonathan’s regime, Boko Haram became like a huge elephant surrounded by thousands of blind men. One could only describe the part he was able to touch on the body of the mammoth animal and not the whole of it. Without diagnosis, only a quack doctor would proceed to treat an ailment in a patient. But that was what Nigeria’s federal government under Jonathan did in respect of the Boko Haram’s carnage.

     

    Meaningful Research

    However, some serious-minded and sincere individuals who were convinced that the problem posed by Boko Haram was beyond mere surface scratching began to research deeply into the tap roots of that obnoxious body. One of such individuals was Jean Herskovits a female Professor of History at the State University of New York, USA who had been writing on Nigerian politics since the   1970s. The other was a well known and highly respected Nigerian Catholic Bishop, Mathew Hassah Kukah of Sokoto Diocese. But since both of these intellectuals held similar opinions on the issue, ‘The Message’ decided to bring the latter’s opinion because of Nigerians’ familiarity with his name and person.

    Bishop Kukah’s Disclosure

    Below is the verbatim text of Bishop Kukah’s public address on Boko Haram which was entitled ‘AN APPEAL TO NIGERIANS’. It was first published in   Nigeria’s Guardian newspaper of January 17, 2012. Please, read:

    “On the occasion of the Carol of Nine Lessons organized by NTA and Radio Nigeria on December 10th last year (2011), I was invited to deliver the message. I chose to speak on the theme, Do Not Be Afraid as a means of encouraging our people against the backdrop of fear and frustration that was mounting at the time. Since then, it would seem that things have gotten progressively worse in our country.

    In the course of my reflections, I sought to encourage my fellow citizens not to be frightened by the events of the time. I insisted that despite these tragic and sad events and the situation of our country, we needed to conquer fear. I argued that the message of Christmas was a message about the good news of the birth of the Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, (God-with us) and the Saviour of the world. Against the backdrop of other developments in the country at that time, I concluded by calling on the federal government not to carry through its plans for the removal of fuel subsidy.

    Since then, things have gradually snowballed well beyond what one had either feared or hoped. On Christmas day, a bomb exploded at St. Theresa’s Catholic Church, Madalla, in Niger State, killing over thirty people and wounding a significant number of other innocent citizens who had come to worship their God as the first part of their Christmas celebrations. Barely two days later, we heard of the tragic and mindless killings within a community in Ebonyi State in which over sixty people lost their lives with properties worth millions of naira destroyed and hundreds of families displaced. In the midst of all this, on New Year’s Day, the President (Goodluck Jonathan) announced the withdrawal of fuel subsidy and threw an already angry and frustrated nation into convulsion.

     

    The Madalla Tragedy

    Right now, I feel that perhaps like the friends of Job (Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar), who came to visit their sick friend and found the burden beyond comprehension, we find ourselves in the same situation. For, as we know, when they came and found Job in his condition, they spent seven days and seven nights, and uttered not a word (Job 2:13). Right now, no one can claim a full understanding of the state we are in. However, even if we cannot understand the issues of the moment, our faith compels us to understand that God’s hand is in all this. The challenge is for us to have the patience to let His will be done.

    The tragedy in Madalla was seen as a direct attack on Christians. When Boko Haram claimed responsibility, this line of argument seemed persuasive to those who believed that these merchants of death could be linked to the religion of Islam. Happily, prominent Muslims rose in unison to condemn this evil act and denounced both the perpetrators and their acts as being un-Islamic. All of this should cause us to pause and ponder about the nature of the force of evil that is in our midst and to appreciate the fact that contrary to popular thinking, we are not faced with a crisis or conflict between Christians and Muslims. Rather, like the friends of Job, we need to humbly appreciate the limits of our human understanding.

    In the last few years, with the deepening crises in parts of Bauchi, Borno, Kaduna, and Plateau states, thanks to the international and national media, it has become fanciful to argue that we have crises between Christians and Muslims. Sadly, the kneejerk reaction of some very uninformed religious leaders has lent credence to this false belief. To complicate matters, some of these religious leaders have continued to rally their members to defend themselves in a religious war. This has fed the propaganda of the notorious Boko Haram and hides the fact that this evil has crossed religious barriers. Let us take a few examples which, though still under investigation across the country, should call for restraint on our part.

     

    An Instance

    Sometime last year, a Christian woman went to her own parish Church in Bauchi and tried to set it ablaze. Again, recently, a man alleged to be a Christian, dressed as a Muslim, went to burn down a Church in Bayelsa. In Plateau State, a man purported to be a Christian was arrested while trying to bomb a Church. Armed men gunned down a group of Christians meeting in a Church and now it turned out that those who have been arrested and are under interrogation are in fact not Muslims and that the story is more of an internal crisis. In Zamfara State, 19 Muslims were killed. After investigation it was discovered that those who killed them were not Christians. Other similar incidents have occurred across the country.

    Clearly, these are very troubled times for our country. But they are also very promising times. I say so because amidst this confusing debris of hate, anger and frustration, we have had some very interesting dimensions. Nigeria is changing because Nigerians are taking back their country from the grip of marauders. These stories, few as they may be, are the beginning of our song of freedom. Christians are now publicly crossing the artificial lines created by falsehood and bigotry. Let us take a few examples of events in the last week alone:

     

    Cooperation

    In Kano, amidst fears and threats of further attacks on Christians, a group of Muslims gathered round to protect Christians as they worshipped. In Minna and recently, in Lagos, the same thing repeated itself as Christians joined hands to protect Muslims as they prayed. In the last week, Christians and Muslims together in solidarity were protesting against bad governance and corruption beyond the falsehood of religion. Once freed from the grip of these dark forces, religion will be able to play its role as a force for harmony, truth and the common good.

    Clearly, drawing from our experiences as Christians, we must note that God has a message for us in all this. To elicit what I consider to be the message, I will make reference to three lessons and I know there are far more.

    First, these times call for prayer. At the height of our confusion during the Abacha years, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria composed two sets of prayers; one, Against Bribery and Corruption and second, for Nigeria in Distress. Millions of Catholics have continued to recite these prayers and we must remain relentless in the belief that God hears our prayers and that God’s ways are not our ways. We know that our Muslim brethren and millions of other non-Christians feel the same and are also praying in a similar way for our country.

     

    A Call for Solidarity

    Two, these times call for solidarity of all people of faith. We are a nation of very strong believers and despite what anyone else may say, millions of our Christians and Muslims do take their religion very seriously. However, you might ask, if that is true, why do we have so many killings in the name of God and of religion? My answer is that we have such killings because we live in an environment of a severely weak architecture of state which allows evil to triumph. It is this poverty that produces jealousy and hatred which leads to violence.

    We live in a state of ineffective law enforcement and tragic social conditions. Corruption has destroyed the fabric of our society. Its corrosive effect can be seen in the ruination of our lives and the decay in our society. The inability of the state to punish criminals as criminals has created the illusion that there is a conflict between Christians and Muslims. In fact, it would seem that many elements today are going to great extremes to pitch Christians against Muslims, and vice versa, so that our attention is taken away from the true source of our woes: corruption. As Nigerians, Christians and Muslims, we must stand together to ensure that our resources are well utilized for the common good. This is why, despite the hardships we must endure as a result of the strike, the Fuel Subsidy debate must be seen as the real dividend of democracy.

     

    Condemnation of evil Leadership

    Three, religious leaders across the faiths must indeed stand up together and face the challenge of the times by offering a leadership that focuses on our common humanity and common good rather than the insignificant issues that divide us. We therefore condemn in very strong terms the tendency by some religious leaders to play politics with the issues of our collective survival. Rather than rallying our people, some of our religious leaders have resorted to divisive utterances, wild allegations and insinuations against fellow adherents of other religions. In the last five or so days, text messages have been circulating across the country appealing to some of our worst demons. We are told that many senior clerics either believed or encouraged the circulation of these divisive and false text messages. We must condemn this for what it is; a grand design by enemies within our folds who are determined to destroy our country. Whatever they may call themselves, they are neither true Christians nor Muslims.

    For those Christians who have reacted in fear, they require conversion. If we wait for these evil men or women to decide when we shall stand for Christ, then we have surrendered our soul to the devil. If we fear to stand up for Christ now, let us remember that He has already said: Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my father in Heaven, Whoever denies me before others, I will deny him before my father in Heaven(Mt 10: 32). Again, Jesus warns that rather than fear at times of uncertainty, adversity or upheavals, we should be confident. He said: When these things begin to take place, stand erect; hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand (Luke. 21: 28). Furthermore, St Paul has assured us that; If we die with Him, we shall live with Him. If we endure with Him, we shall reign with him (2 Tim 2: 11-12). Surely, those who are asking us to go under our beds, to flee in the face of persecution must be reading a different Bible.

     

    Difficult Times

    These are difficult times but they are also times of promise. Our country has turned its back on all forms of dictatorships. Our hands are on the plough and we are resolutely committed to democracy. Like a Catholic marriage, we may not be happy but we cannot contemplate a divorce. God does not make mistakes.

    Although the freedom and growth promised by democracy are not here yet, we must remind ourselves that a better tomorrow is possible, a more united and peaceful Nigeria is possible. The challenges of the last few days have shown the resilience of our people and their commitment to democracy and a better life. We believe this is possible. The government must strive to earn the trust of our people. All sides must take lessons from the demonstrations and resolve to build a better and stronger nation. Let us hold on to the words of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI when he told the President, religious, traditional rulers and people of the Republic of Benin in the Presidential Palace on the 19th of November: Do not cut off your peoples from their future by mutilating their present….There are too many scandals and injustices, too much corruption and greed, too many errors and lies, too much violence. All peoples desire to understand the political and economic choices which are made in their name; they wish to participate in good governance. No economic regime is ideal and no economic choice is neutral. But these must always serve the common good”.

     

    • Address by Rev. Father Mathew Hassah Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese (first published in 2012).

  • Summary of facts

    At no time in the life of man can the true nature of human existence more manifest than in Ramadan. It is in that sacred month that Muslims reflect mostly on the purpose of their existence on earth. Some people fasted actively last year but are no more today. Some put their feet at the door step of Ramadan this year but never entered it. Some fell by the way side along the line. Some fasted with absolute faith in Allah and confidence in making use of the lessons of Ramadan. Some joined the spiritual train with no idea of their destination in the month.

    Segments of Ramadan

    At the beginning of this sacred month, an analysis was done in this column classifying the 30 or 29 days of Ramadan into three segments. The first segment was said to contain the first ten days of the month during which the blessings of Allah came to the faithful Muslims freely and in abundance. Except for meeting that segment with faith and good intention, there was no working for it. That segment ended after 10 days paving way for the second segment that began on the 11th day of Ramadan.

    During the 10-day period of the second segment, most fasting Muslims intensified worship (Ibadah) by spending their days and nights seeking Allah’s forgiveness and by chanting Istighfar. But such forgiveness was neither automatic nor free. Usually, conditions were attached to it. One of such conditions was for every fasting Muslims to admit his/her misdeeds and repent of them. The second was to voluntarily and genuinely seek forgiveness. And the third condition was to resolve never to return to such misdeeds again. To seek Allah’s forgiveness during the month of Ramadan, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was reported to have said that “if you want to speak with Allah, make your request on prostration. And if you want Allah to speak to you recite the Qur’an”. No one who abided by the above conditions and followed it scrupulously would ever be disappointed. Allah is both promising and fulfilling. He never reneges on His promise. In Qur’an 2:186 He promises thus: “…when my servants ask you (Prophet Muhammad) about me, tell them that I am very close to them. I answer the prayers of whoever seeks my favour if he prays to me (without any intermediary). So, let them expect my favourable response and trust in me so that they may be rightly guided”

    Midway Ramadan

    Those second ten days were not just to consolidate on the blessings of the first ten days, they were also to prepare the fasting Muslims for the last ten days when they are expected to be fully liberated from the evil machinations of any Satanic forces.

    Human life is not measured by the time or manner of his or her death. In Islam, death is neither the consequence of sin nor the repercussion of ignorance. There are instances when the sinless dies and the sinful lives. There are also instances when the learned dies while the ignorant lives. The schedule of life and death is not in the custody of any human being. Death is a debt which every living being owes and must pay.

    Not even Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was spared of death or given a foreknowledge of it. Allah ordered him to say in the Q. 10:49 thus: “Say I have not the power to benefit or to harm myself except what Allah pleases. Unto every nation is a fixed term. When their terms expire, they cannot delay it by an hour nor can they bring it forth before its time”.

    This is a verse of the Qur’an which the ignorant ones have severally quoted and interpreted according to their whim. In their imagination, they want the Prophet to claim infallibility to enable them call him a liar.

    Nostalgia

    Some people dream but never live to realise their dreams. Some look but never see. It is only in the imagination of man that age should be a factor of death. We shall all die at our scheduled time. Therefore, whoever is privileged to pass through this year’s Ramadan successfully should endeavour to add spiritual value to his or her life and not diminish in faith after the sacred month. We shall all account for that value before Allah.

    In a few days time this year’s Ramadan will come to an end by the grace of Allah and we shall continue to look back with nostalgia to the good things we have done in the sacred month. For instance, we shall remember that in no other month of Hijrah calendar is the role of Muslim women more pronounced than in Ramadan. Like in other months, they display the roles of wives, mothers as well as that of their husbands’ confidants. But more than in other months, they exhibit their religious dedication in Ramadan.

    Even as they assist their husbands financially in maintaining the homes, they still take care of those husbands as well as the children and relatives domestically. At the time of the day when the husbands are knocked out by fatigue arising from fasting, the wives are still busy in the kitchen preparing Iftar for the household. At the time in the night when some husbands are engaged in Tahajjud, or are snoring in bed, the wives are already up in the kitchen preparing the Sahur for the family.

    Some of these women are pregnant. Some are suckling their children. Some of them are knowledgeable enough to do the Tilawah (recitation of the Qur’an) like their husbands. Some are even rich enough to finance the home fully or partially.

    And, in all these activities, they never feel tired. Where and when they feel tired, they never show it. If any month has ever depicted the virtues of women, it is Ramadan and the women activities in it. If for the reason of their activities in Ramadan alone, they deserve tenderness and dignified treatment in the hands of their husbands.

    We shall also remember the role of our children in the month and then endeavour to ensure the continuity of those rewarding activities.

    Allah’s greatest gift

    Children are Allah’s greatest gift to man. Their presence in a house is blessing. Their contribution is immense. Those are children for you. They can play the role of teachers just as they can do that of students. They learn fast, they teach fast. They are a major security for parents in any given environment.

    Children play both temporal and spiritual roles in a matrimonial life. And with such roles, they sometimes create hope for humanity and sometimes, they signal despair. They are the greatest asset in the possession of parents in time of peace. They are also the greatest weapon for those parents against the forces of Satan.

    Because of their innocence, they pave way for God’s forgiveness and quick acceptance of prayers. And, most importantly, children guarantee the continuity of man’s existence on earth. It is only with them that the fulfillment of today’s promise is possible tomorrow.

    In the Qur’an, children are mentioned many times and most often with reverence. They are treated in that glorious book as a major issue in the life of man. As orphans, they do not only have a role to play, they also compel some adults to play a role relating to them.

    As heirs to their parents, they have substantial shares in inheritance. Muslim children are like cubs. They follow very closely the footstep of their parents or guardians. They are often with their parents during the five daily prayers. They watch their parents as the latter give charity to the poor. They accompany them to public lectures and Islamic social gatherings.

    And, in Ramadan, children are part of the Muslims’ total spiritual package. They wake up with them at night. They fast with them in the day. They break the fast with them at sunset. They join their parents at Tafsir and night lectures. They participate in Laylatul Qadr and in giving Zakatul Fitr to the poor. Who can substitute the role of children in a matrimonial home?

    In all the above mentioned activities, children are supposed to be encouraged. At the tender age of seven, they should be guided to fast even if for half a day. And when they reach the age of 10 they should be strengthened in faith and in religious deeds. They should be provided with necessities of life both on the temporal and spiritual grounds. With these, they will grow up to become the fulfillment of their parents’ dreams.

    Most children grow up as good or bad Muslims by emulating their parents. A child is therefore what his parents make him. If advantage of Ramadan is not taken by parents to mould their children into good Muslims what other platform will be used? Your child is your sun. Make hay with it while it shines.

    Neighbours

    We shall also recall how we related to our neighbours, especially the non-Muslims among them in that month. In Islam, neighbours are as important as the next of kin. And, Islam attaches so much respect to them. According to Bukhari and Muslim, Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W) was reported to have sworn by Allah three times saying: “he does not believe in Allah! He does not believe in Allah! He does not believe in Allah! And when he was asked who? He replied by saying: whoever creates fear in his neighbours atrociously”

    In another Hadith also reported by Bukhari and Muslim, the Prophet was quoted as saying that “Whoever believes in Allah and the last day let him be nice to his neighbours and respect his guests”

    In the month of Ramadan a good Muslim is expected to wear a new toga of sobriety and repentance. He doubles his good deeds to his neighbours, extending generosity to them and cultivating a new atmosphere of friendliness and trust with them. He genuinely gives them as much impression of love and brotherhood as he does with his consanguine relatives.

    It does not matter whether those neighbours are Muslims or non-Muslims. Neither does it matter whether they are tribesmen or non-natives. The Prophet did not discriminate in his Hadith when he was admonishing on neighbours. And that is the inalienable position of Islam on neighbours. Whoever, had quarreled with his neighbours before Ramadan therefore, let him/her go and settle the quarrel.

    Besides abstaining from foods, drinks and sex, in the month of Ramadan, a good Muslim must mind his relationship with people around him, including neighbours. Fasting in the month of Ramadan cannot be taken in half measure. Whoever wants to receive full rewards for his religious activities in Ramadan should treat his neighbours well. And, when Ramadan is over, the good deeds must continue. Ramadan is not made a pillar of Islam by accident. Its purpose is to return man to the original state of purity in which he was created. That Allah entrusts the world to man is also not by accident. Allah consulted wide and far before entrusting this great responsibility to man having volunteered to bear it. This much is revealed in Qur’an 33:71 thus: “We offered the trust (of the world) to the heavens; the earth and the mountains they all turned it down and were afraid of it. Man undertook to bear it but he has proved to be insincere and deceitful”. For man to re-examine himself, repent his misdeeds and be redeemed, therefore, Allah brought Ramadan as a means of rescue.

    Needs and wants

    It is in the month of Ramadan that Muslims reconfirm NEEDS rather than WANTS as the necessities required for the sustenance of their lives. Muslims, by their faith and orientation, are not, ordinarily, given to WANTS. They are more concerned about NEEDS than WANTS. The reason for this is not far-fetched. With NEEDS come contentment and satisfaction while WANTS are the cause of greed and avarice.

    Allah, the creator and Sustainer of the universe, had provided the needs of every living creature even before its creation. But then, He knew that of all those creatures man alone would go beyond NEEDS into the realm of WANTS. That was perhaps what informed the negative role which Satan assumed in the life of man shortly after the creation of Adam.

    By introducing WANTS to man, what Satan did was to create a permanent job for himself in the life of man. Without WANTS the world would not have been what it is today. Blood would not have been shed. Money would not have been deified. Hatred would not have been known to man. And, man’s inhumanity to man would have been totally averted.

    The effect of WANTS first became known when Qabil (Cain), the first son of Adam preferred his brother’s wife to his. In the argument which ensued, Qabil (Cain) killed his brother Habil (Abel) and combined the latter’s wife with his. Thus, greed and avarice became ingredients of man’s culture. And WANTS rather than NEEDS became the domineering factor in the life of man. These are some of the anomalies in man that Ramadan comes to correct every year. If you are a witness to it this year, utilise your experience maximally. You don’t know whether or not you will have that opportunity again. Ramadan Karim!

  • As Buhari visits US

    As Buhari visits US

    It is an open fact that Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari will be an invited guest of President Barrack Obama of the United States on the 20th of this month. Such is nothing strange especially whenever the honeymoon remains fresh for any newly elected President of an African country. Virtually all the former Presidents of Nigeria also enjoyed that privilege in Washington. The difference this time however, is that President Buhari’s visit is coming up at a time when sodomy has become America’s new civilisation. And President Buhari’s host has described that ‘new civilisation’ which was authoritatively proclaimed by America’s Supreme Court last Friday as a joyous victory for his regime which he may want to share with anybody that falls into that country’s web of sacrilege. The Almighty Allah said much about this in Qur’an 11: verses 76, 77, 81 & 82 as follows:

    “And when our messengers came to Lut (Lot), he was grieved for them because he could not protect them against the sacrilegious acts of his townsmen (who were neck deep in homosexuality). Lut concluded: ‘this is a day of woe.’ And as the evil doers came rushing towards him he said: ‘’my people, here are my daughters; they are (sexually) rather lawful to you than your fellowmen. Have fear of Allah and do not humiliate me (with your sacrilege) before my guests. Is there no single good man amongst you?

    “Then, the Angels said: ‘Lut! We are the messengers of your Lord; they shall not touch you. Depart with your kinsfolk in some part of the night and let none of you look back, except your wife. She shall suffer the fate of the others. Their appointed time is the morning. And, is the morning not near? And when our judgement came to pass, we laid them (and their towns) upside down and let loose upon them a shower of burnt stones bearing the tokens of your Lord. Such is not far off from all evil doers”.

     

    Exposition

    The above Qur’anic quotations are in reference to the people of Prophet Lut (Lot) and the consequences of their evil deeds. But as the last quoted verse indicates, the story of such evil machination did not end with them and its consequences will not end with them. Now, the imperial West seems to have found a new civilisation in sodomy. It probably believes that the men of Sodom and Gomorrah were afflicted by the mentioned calamity either because they were not clever enough or they had no nuclear power with which to fight God.

     

    Words of advice

    Sodomy has long been a global phenomenon from which no part of the world is excluded. But with its current institutionalisation backed up by governmental authority, especially in Europe and America the leaders of sane countries from the rest of the world must be on their guard. It is characteristic of the West to want to impose any newly invented idea by them, and considered as civilisation, on others. This is where President Muhammadu Buhari has to be very careful when he travels to the United States.

    The Western imperialists have a way of luring others to their traps with open carrots while hiding the stick. With them, there is no free lunch. Every gift that comes from them is a Greek one. As of now, President Barrack Obama seems to be very desperate in helping Nigeria to get rid of Boko Haram menace. And he has noticed desperation on the part of President Buhari in solving the same problem.

    When two Presidents meet with such desperation on the same issue one is likely to bow for the other depending on whose will is stronger. But in a situation where one of them is the giver and the other is the recipient, the elasticity of will may be limited.

    Whoever pays the piper surely dictates the tune. The imperialists do not traditionally live in a house with only one door. They are invariably known for keeping the front door wide open to all visitors while a back door, which is an alternative, remains hidden. No Nigerian interest can ever be a priority for an American President.

     

    The evil axis

    America is currently the champion of modern civilisation. Whatever emerges from America is perceived as a trend of civilisation with which the rest of the world must keep pace. Last Friday (June 27, 2015), America’s Supreme Court gave a split judgment (of 5 to 4) that shocked the sane world to the marrow.

    The judgment officially granted the citizens of that devil’s own country the legal right to practise sodomy throughout the country in what is now seen as a token of civilisation at higher pedestal.

    The implications of that evil judgment are innumerable. Some of them are as follows:

    1.Marriage between male and female has been consigned to the uncivilised basket of the primordial time.

    2.The legal natural and conventional means of procreation of children has been rubbished and rendered irrelevant.

    3.Adoption of other people’s children has become a new artificial means of increasing human demography.

    4.Through a devilish connivance with Europe, America has challenged the authority of the Almighty God to make law for mankind.

    Human history is generally dotted with waves of civilisations from era to era. The fall of one civilisation has always signaled the beginning of another. Where are the civilisations of the yore today?

    Haven’t such ancient civilisations, such as Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Mesopotamian, Carthaginian, Greek and Roman each of which lasted far more than a thousand years now become sheer rubbles on the pages of history? From the experience of history, we have come to learn that when a civilisation wants fall, its conductors will begin to see themselves as super human beings and clad in the garb of arrogance. That is now the lot of America which amounts to challenging the authority of God.

     

    Audacious chief gay

    A few years back, the world’s chief gay crusader was no less a personality than the Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron whose campaign for free homosexuality and same sex marriage is going international.

    At the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting in Australia in 2011, Cameron’s preoccupation was to sell the constitutional entrenchment of free homosexuality to other heads of governments, particularly those from Africa. He threatened to withdraw his government’s aid to any country that refused to allow gay freedom in its constitution.

     

    Reactions

    The first reaction to that threat came from the then Ghanaian President, John Atta Mills, who publicly and eloquently told his fellow countrymen that his government would not tolerate the linkage of foreign aid to promotion of gay rights.

    President Mills’ open denunciation came after David Cameron boasted in the British Parliament that he had sold the concept of gay rights to the Commonwealth countries.

    “If the aid is going to be tied to things that will destroy the moral fibre of our society, do you really want that?” John Mills concluded.

    Ghana was not alone in such denunciation. Uganda also asserted that she would rather suffer any economic backlash from anywhere over her opposition to gay rights. Meanwhile, the Presidents of both countries had separately proscribed homosexuality and condemned Cameron’s threat.

    However, about a year thereafter, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda went back to his vomit and announced to the world that Uganda was ready for institutionalisation of homosexuality in line with the new trend in the West. The presidential afterthought was to enable Uganda gain access to the satanic dollars that were to be granted to her in the name of economic aid.

     

    Analysis

    Out of the 54 members of the Commonwealth of Nations, 41 maintained their enacted laws banning homosexuality with many of those laws dating back to the British colonial rule. During the early days of resistance to that evil proposal, Uganda had described Cameron’s threat to cut bilateral aid as “bullying tactics”. And Ghana, which enjoyed some 36 million British pounds aid in 2010, said she would not compromise on the matter. It will be recalled that Cameron had been harping on gay rights since early 2010. He had apparently promised his party to take the campaign for gay rights to the outside world, convinced that the British point of view was more salutary than Africa’s.

    When Malawi, another African Country, sentenced two homosexuals to 14 years imprisonment with hard labour shortly after the 2011 Commonwealth conference, David Cameron responded by slashing $30 million from that country’s aid.

     

    Nigerian experience

    Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan led a Nigerian delegation to the referred Commonwealth meeting in Australia. But no one in that delegation gave any report of that devilish mission after the delegation arrived home.

    What we rather saw was a shameless sponsor of a bill in the Senate calling for the inclusion of gay freedom in Nigerian constitution. Incidentally, a public controversy had ensued on an allegation that the then Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu was working on such a bill, an allegation which he promptly denied.

    Although the allegation could not be proved, people felt it was be too much of a coincidence for a bill of that nature to suddenly surface in our Senate subsequent to the Commonwealth meeting at which Cameron’s gay crusade was intense. The coincidence became more suspicious when a termagant Nigerian woman of South-Eastern extraction suddenly appeared on the Senate floor to defend the sacrilegious bill.

    However, we thank God that the then Senate President, Senator David Mark, maintained his dignity and upheld the cultural honour of Nigerians by not allowing any debate at all on such an obnoxious bill. In his remark over the bill, David Mark told his colleagues that such a bill was not only incompatible with African culture but also antithetical to religious beliefs in Nigeria.

    Though it could be assumed that for David Cameron to have championed such a desecration, he must have also been a gay but what could be  strange in having a gay as the Prime Minister of Britain when publicly known gays were being consecrated as Bishops in the Church of England which was and is still headed by the Queen. And despite the hue and cry over Cameron’s heretic action in that instance the Queen as Head of State remained silent an action which some people considered as a sign of approval.

     

    Irony

    The irony of Cameron’s crusade in 2011 was that he had, in the past opposed any inclusion of gay rights in the British constitution. Even as recently as 2003 he voted for the retention of section 28 of the British acts which prohibited gay rights in Britain.

    But in a sharp departure from his Tory past, Cameron later came out shamelessly to apologise for supporting that section of that constitution and turned round to say that teaching sexual equality in the British society was an important way of combating homophobic bullying.

    Britain’s changing attitude towards homosexuality was highlighted last in a study in 2011by the National Centre for Social Research which found that 36% of respondents thought sexual relations between two adults of the same sex were “always or mostly” wrong. This was down from 63% in 1983. Today, the figure in favour of sodomy in Europe and America has gone up so tremendously that it has boosted the audacity of some evil agents to turn the evil act into an open market trade.

     

    Nigeria’s cultural bereavement

    Now, with the rapid rate of moral degeneration and deification of capitalism in the West, major vices like homosexuality, lesbianism and bisexualism have become so contagious that those opposed to them are in the minority. This cannot be strange in any European country. What became strange is the official exportation of such vices to Africa with such cheap blackmail. The concern here is not much for Africa as a continent as it is for Nigeria as a country.

    Here is a country of multi-cultural, multi-religious adherents who had once held on tenaciously to their cultural identity and religious affinity for centuries. But with the arrival of European colonialists over a century ago, foreign vices began to overwhelm Nigerian cultural lifestyle as blind imitation became the tradition of Nigerian youths. Thus, today most Nigerians, especially those of the south, only see with European eyes, speak with European tongues and reason with European minds as they have totally lost their cultural origin to the imitated evil lifestyle of the Europeans. In this case and many other vices that are yet to surface, only genuine prayer can bail out Nigeria.

     

    Admonition and supplication

    “Allah does not impose upon a soul a duty that it cannot bear; for each soul is the benefit of what it has earned; and upon it is the evil of what it has wrought. Our Lord! Do not punish us if we forget or make a mistake; Do not lay on us a burden that you did not lay on those before us; Our Lord! Do not impose upon us what we have no strength to bear; Pardon us, grant us protection and have mercy on us; You are the Patron (of the universe) so help us to overcome the machinations of the infidels”. Amen.